


Remembering

by Memsev



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Chameleon Arch, Fix-It, Gen, Journey's End
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-05 02:17:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 26
Words: 54,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/717712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Memsev/pseuds/Memsev
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some secrets only come out years later. Some promises are hard to keep. Wilfred Mott and Sylvia Noble have kept theirs for most of their lives. A Journey's End Fix-it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I woke up this morning with this fully formed in my head, sprung out of bed and wrote it down before anything else.

"Wait!" Wilf calls out as the Doctor turns to go. There is something in his voice; something forceful that makes the Time Lord pause, even as Donna turns to look at her grandfather in shock. "Wait," he says again, looking between the two confused pairs of eyes. Sylvia, hearing his raised voice, hurries in from the kitchen, her eyes once again dry and curious, as they always are when her father commands. Wilf meets her eyes solemnly, the grief in him clear on his face. The Doctor seems hesitant, but walks into the room, stands carefully a few feet away from Donna, his face tense and barely hiding his heartache. 

Donna senses the weight of the situation, even as she wonders what is going on, her face an open book to her grandfather. She absently hangs up on Nerrys, cutting off the chatter mid-sentence. "Gramps?" she asks when he just stands there for a moment, paralysed by what needs to be done. His eyes, barely dry from the Doctor's explanations, water again as he turns a quick look towards his daughter. He sees the moment she understands his intention, sees her hard mask slam into place to cover her grief and denial. He steels himself and turns to the two who are watching him with some trepidation. 

"I need you to wait, Doctor," he says, and ignored the harsh look on his face at the use of his name, "Just a moment; I've something to show the two of you." His voice is more serious than it has ever been. Sylvia whimpers, a desperate sound full of fear and regret, but she doesn't protest. Instead she turns and walks stiffly to the kitchen table, never meeting her daughter's eyes. Wilf gestures for the two to join her.  
Both the Doctor and Donna have sensed that there is something happening that they don't know about. He gestures silently, again encouraging them to join his daughter. The pair exchanges a baffled glance in perfect synchrony, but do as they are bid. Wilf draws a sigh of relief, hope starting to dig its treacherous claws into his heart, a painful thing bubbling around in his mind. He nods encouragingly at the people seated at the table, then turns swiftly. That glance puts a certainty in his steps, and he hurries as fast as his old legs can carry him, up the stairs and farther, into the tiny attic. 

In the far corner, a box rests. It's a simple box, somewhat smaller than the others. The cardboard is still stiff and uncreased, and shows no signs of ever having been opened since it were packed. It isn't heavy; Wilf feels not a twinge in his old back as he lifts it. He hurries down again, towards the kitchen, ignoring how the cardboard leaves visible patches of dust on his jumper, how the dust of the attic clings to him.

The three are still sitting as he left them, an awkward silence, tinged with bitter regret, heartache, and confusion filling the space between them. Donna keeps shooting concerned glances between a man she doesn't remember and her mother. Sylvia is crying, Wilf notes in dismay, silent tears flowing down weathered cheeks, her delicate hands folded on the table, eyes focused on the middle distance.  
The Doctor's gaze lingers, as it always does, on Donna. Wilf can tell that he is unaware of how much his broken heart is on display. 

They all turn and follow his progress as he walks in, eyes turning curious as they notice the box he is carrying. Sylvia gives a strangled sob as she finally recognises it. Wilf places a gentling hand on her shoulder as he passes, then gently places the box on the table. 

"I'm sorry, Sylvia, but I made a promise to Donna." The words are quiet but firm as steel. She nods brokenly, a hand wiping at her tears as she pulls herself together.  
Wilf can tell that it is the seriousness of his interaction with his daughter that keeps Donna from asking. She has always had good instincts like that, he thinks fondly, even as he opens the box and unpacks the contents. First several albums, each stuffed full of memories he has tried hard to suppress for his family's sake, then a small jewellers box, of the kind that might hold a bracelet. He solemnly places each item on the table, then moves the box out of the way, a wave of melancholy gripping his old heart, mingling with hope.

He looks up and smiles shakily at his granddaughter and the Doctor, then gently reaches for the first album and opens it. His hand, and eyes, lingers for a moment, before he straightens his back and flips the album to face Donna and the Doctor. The album itself is old and worn, the pages stiff and dusty, but the pictures themselves are vibrant, unfaded.  
The first page is just one portrait-sized picture. 

The sky is a brilliant cyan behind the mountains in the background, all purple and silver. There are trees in the foreground, framing a couple of people. Their branches are blue, and in decidedly alien forms.  
Wilf watches confusion flow across both of their faces when they recognise one of the people as Donna, her long fiery hair in a perky pony tail, and dressed in what might be called a frock-coat in dark brown, over a decidedly Victorian looking ensemble. It takes a while before they recognise the other person, almost minute if Wilf had to guess. The young features are split by a wide grin, one arm slug around Donna's shoulders.  
Donna looks up first, eyes flicking between the photo and Wilf, comparing features. He meets her eyes with a small but growing smile. The Doctor seems frozen, eyes fixed on the picture as if it holds the keys to the universe. 

"That was our first trip. Feldspoon, you called it." Wilf says to Donna. A deep crease appears between her eyebrows. The Doctor is focused on him now, a heavy confusion mingled with disbelief on his features.  
Wilf gestures mildly to the album, and then gently flips a page to the next picture, eyes catching Donna's. "There were many others, following that." Donna grabs the album, and flicks through it with increasing agitation. "I don't.." She starts, meeting Wilf eyes, hers full of fear and a glimmer of dawning recognition.  
He sees her fight it.  
"I don't understand, Gramps." Wilfs heart near breaks at her tone. Sylvia whimpers softly, cupping her face in her hands to hide her reaction, then swiftly gathers her dignity around her Ike a cloak. Wilf breaks eye-contacts and picks up the small case, flipping the lid and pensively staring at the contents. He looks up and meets her eyes again, this time with a sad smile, before he gently extricates a fob-watch from the jeweller’s case. 

The Doctor is the one who makes a strangled noise this time, his expressive face awash with shock and the beginnings of hope. Donna flicks her gaze towards him at the sound, but quickly refocuses on the watch as if drawn by a magnet. "Gramps?" she asks quietly, her hands reaching for the watch. He hands it over silently, watches her gaze at it, her mind visibly trying to work it all out.  
"You chose 'Donna' as your name as a sort of joke. Means 'Lady'" Wilf says, emotion choking his voice. He's not sure if he is ready for this loss, but the alternative is unthinkable. She looks at him questioningly over the watch. "I never knew your real name, of course I didn't. When we were travelling together," Wilf pauses and gently strokes at the albums, the memory of mountains gently swaying in the breeze flashing behind his eyes. 

He smiles at her, humour finding his eyes. "You used to call yourself The Tinker, Tink for short. Laughed yourself sick when you took us to see Peter Pan in the cinema." Sylvia snorts just slightly, a fond smile forcing its way onto her face. She grabs one of the albums, flips through it until she finds what she is looking for.  
There is another old picture. Wilf is older in this one, a grown man, with his arms wrapped around a beaming Eileen. Donna is standing on the other side of Eileen, and has an arm casually slung across Eileen's shoulders. In front of the trio stands a small girl of perhaps nine, blond hair full of curls and a large smile on her face. Sylvia looks up from the picture, tears slipping from her eyes as she meets Donna's blue. "That was a great day," she chokes out, "travelling with Aunt Tink." She stops and doesn't continue, one hand absently stroking the picture. 

Wilf looks at the Doctor. He is still frozen in his seat. "It was the Time War, you see," he tries to explain, "they were using her inventions for weapons. They wanted her to make more." He continues. "It was my idea for her to hide here, as long as she needed."  
Donna stares at the photos, mesmerised. 

The Doctor stands abruptly, and then paces the length of the kitchen twice. He sits down heavily in the chair he had just vacated, and slumps foreword to rest his head in his hands. Wilf doesn't comment, pretends that he can't hear the stifled sob that escapes.  
Donna looks up from the pictures and glances between her remaining family. "I don't understand," she says, but Wilf can hear the uncertainty of it; can hear the barely concealed fear. Parts of her understand.  
"You will, sweetheart." He says gently. She had been his best friend, and his granddaughter. Her hands are gripping the watch tightly, her knuckles white with the strain. He grasps them, gently holding them between his own. 

"Open the watch, Sweetheart." He says, and she does.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Donna doesn't quite know how to react.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I am easily convinced.

There isn't any great flash of light, or sound, though Donna almost expects there to be. The fob-watch is warm in her hands, and when she pushes the release it warms gently. Well, it glows too, but it doesn't flash. The golden glow is at once terribly alien and comfortingly familiar. The gaseous light that emerges seems almost alive, moving hesitantly, swaying like dust disturbed by a breath, yet curiously purposeful.   
It seems to pool near her face, swaying slightly in the space between herself and that strangely familiar friend of her grandfather in the seat beside her. Donna almost forgets that something is supposed to happen, mesmerised by he movement. It catches her by surprise, then, when it suddenly surges towards her, going straight for her face.   
"Oi!" she yells in surprise and nearly knocks over her chair as she hurriedly leans back. Much to late to make a difference. 

It has already reached her, and her vision clouds.

There are no flashes of insight, no slide-shows of memories. Her eyes cloud with regenerative energy, and suddenly she just knows. Who she is, where she came from, what she had run from, and it's all just there again. It's as if some wind came and blew the fog out of her mind.   
Strange, she thinks, that Donna Noble, her human life, hasn't faded at all. The expected disconnect doesn't happen, Donna Noble is not swallowed by Tink. 

Well, she thinks to herself, Donna was Tink, just slightly less so. Donna Noble and Tink the Time Lady, and she can't help but snort at the name again, are the same person. Her eyes flick down to the picture that Sylvia had found, and she nearly starts laughing. She had taken the Mott family to see Peter Pan on opening night, in 1953. Was it Florida or California? She can't remember, silly details like that easily slipping her mind. She had been so pleased to bring her substitute family to see it, she thinks fondly, it had been a good day. 

Donna reaches out and gently runs a finger across the glossy photo. "A Family Adventure," she mutters quietly. Not quietly enough, the others hear her. Wilf laughs softly. She looks up and meets the eyes of her best-friend/grandfather, and giggles along with him for a moment. There is a part of her that cringes away when she suddenly really notices him. He looks so old now, they have so little time left.   
Sylvia sniffles quietly, and it catches Donna's attention. When Donna looks at her, it is suddenly hard to separate Sylvia who is her mother, from Sylvia the adorable, if very headstrong, little girl who called her aunt Tink.

There is a resigned look on her features as she sits there and scans Donna with her eyes. "Hi again, Aunt Tink," Sylvia says, her voice barely audible. Donna isn't sure how to respond at first. The time spent as Donna Noble vastly eclipses the time she was 'Aunt Tink' to the daughter of her best friend. Sylvia had been more of a mother than the woman who raised her originally ever was. "Hey, Mum." She ends up responding with feeling. Sylvia's eyes spill over, then she seems to remember herself, straightening and drying off her eyes with a dismissive sniff. Donna smiles, then suddenly remembers that she isn't alone with her family. 

She turns swiftly in her chair to face the strange man that claims to be her grandfather's friend. The sense of 'Time Lord' slaps her across the olfactory system like a brick to the gut, and for a moment she sits there utterly stunned. Her eyes scan his face, feeling a distinct sense of recognition, but no corresponding memories rush forward.   
There are drying tears on his face, the oddly mismatched features looking at her with such hope that she feels almost uncomfortable under his scrutiny. "Donna?" he asks hopefully and his warm voice, so full of concern and other emotions she can't name, pings something in her mind. There is a..

"Whot?! Why the effing hell do I have a memory block in my head?" she yells in his face, completely certain, for whatever reason, that he is the one responsible. The yelling itself is really satisfying for some reason, as is the utterly dumbfounded expression on his face, brown eyes wide, jaw slack.   
He stays that way for almost a minute before reacting. "I, I, that is..er, I thought you were human!" he suddenly exclaims with enthusiasm, as if that will clear everything up. She glares, deeply unimpressed. Apparently realising that his answer is unsatisfactory, he continues in a flood of babble from which she gathers that some form of badly done meta-crisis is to blame.   
"Well, I am clearly not human, you great berk! So get rid of it." She cuts in before he can get too far off in Babylonia, and then she punches his shoulder without really knowing why. It feels natural, so she goes with it, then grabs a hand and puts it to her face. She imperiously gestures for him to get on with it, certain that this is going to be unpleasant. The mental touch is achingly familiar, so they've clearly done this before, probably more than once, she manages to think before she remembers.

It isn't like the Chameleon arch at all. 

The memories of the last two years explode into her mind. They flow through her like a tsunami, carrying them both through it all, tangled mentally together like a snarl of kudzu. Donna cries for the people of Pompeii once again, feeling the grief and the terrible burden of their lives. A swell of music starts somewhere that fills her hearts with freedom and captivity, and she remembers the Ood.   
There is Lance, the first time she meets this impossible man, and the Adipose, the second time. Her hearts clench and break when Jenny steps out of the (is that a loom? Where did these people get a loom?!) cloning machine, only to die later that same day. The library is just as terrifying the second time, and she is suddenly aware of a deeply rooted irritation with the woman that saved them, that she isn't sure she felt the first time.   
There is a certain horror in her gut when they go through the memories of the alternate world, and then she commits suicide to save this man. She feels him recoil, try to draw back, but the link they are engaged in wont let him. She feels nearly sick at the memory of what that madwoman had done to the Doctor's TARDIS, feels herself gag violently, and mentally takes back any positive thoughts she might have thought towards Rose Tyler. 

Then they are at the crucible of the Daleks. Donna thinks they must almost be done, so she calms herself and goes forward with renewed vigour. When Tink realises how Rose had returned to this world, she shrieks with mental anguish. No! So much death could have been avoided! She yells at the apparition of the young blond, and ignores the swell of guilt that flows from the Doctor. When they reach the meta-crisis, she almost expects something else to suddenly jump out at her that Human Donna had missed. It does, just not what she would have ever believed.

Instead of continuing through her own memories, she is suddenly flooded with his. 

She is nearly knocked out by the power of the memories that flow through her as the life of the Doctor is poured into her. She flinches with the knowledge that he is of house Lungbarrow, those high-born tossers, then speaks out with him against the idiocy of the Time War, and cries with him when he uses the Moment to Time Lock their home planet, dooming them to be the last free people of their kind. The switch back to Donna's own memories leaves her dazed , and she barely notices anything, even her own thick and frantic emotions as she begs him to let her die rather than forget. When she blinks back to the kitchen of Sylvia Noble, she has the collected memories of two Time Lords running havoc in her mind. 

Donna just stares at him for a while, noting that he seems about as dazed as she feels. A tickle in her mind snaps her out of it, and she punches his arm again, hard. He flinches back and rubs his arm, a wounded expression on his face, and that is when she realises that there is a link between them, and that he is completely oblivious to it. Donna feels his joy at their reunion, his relief piled on top of hers.

Donna keeps staring at him. "Oooh, lord!" she groans in exasperation when he just stares back, "you bleedin pillock!" she snaps at him, tempted to hit him again. "Where the heck you get off, wiping my memories while I beg you not to?" she bites out, though it is more a statement than a question. With his entire life in her head, she knows why. He doesn't answer, just rubs at his arm some more, and mutters a plaintive 'owww'.   
Donna rolls her eyes again. Part of her really wants to be angry with him, but she can't be. If he hadn't done what he did, then she would have died never knowing, well, anything. 

That is a bitter pill to swallow, because she is still Donna Noble, and Donna Noble would rather have died than forget their adventures, forget who she was with him. 

There is an awkward sort of silence between them now. Donna nearly startles out of her skin when Wilf clears his throat. "So, is it back to Tink, then?" he asks her, after she has turned in his direction again. It is a tone she has heard from him innumerable times during their travels together. Uncertainty, buried under acceptance. It takes some effort to smooth the martian-inspired glare from her face, but she does it for Wilf. Then runs through her thoughts again, and snorts with laughter. Couldn't really call him that anymore.   
She meets her best-friend/Grandfather's eyes with a warm smile. "Donna is fine, Gramps.I've gotten pretty used to it now." She answers kindly. Donna straightens in her chair a bit."Heck if you didn't treat me like family should. I'm certainly not disowning you." She goes for one of her more boisterous tones, one that both of her had used numerous times, and is pleased that she succeeds in getting Wilf to smile. Donna moves without much thought and nearly climbs over the table to wrap him in a hug, reaching one arm out and drawing Sylvia in as well. A tension that she had been unaware of, slowly seeps out of the people in her arms.  
Donna gently releases the two, then lets herself slide back into her chair with a satisfied hum. She is surrounded by people she trust, the last time she had been this relaxed was..She sits straighter in her chair and focuses on Wilf. "Wilf, what happened to my TARDIS?"

 

>>>


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Donna finds her BABY.

Donna latches on to the Doctor's arm as they amble after Wilf. The old man is walking briskly towards his allotment, cheerfully humming along to some song only he can hear. Donna hasn't seen him this happy for ages, and it startles her to realise how much she's missed it. Wilf has always been a kind and compassionate man, always with a smile and a friendly gesture for anyone. She hadn't noticed before, not really, how it seemed like he was carrying a large weight on his shoulders until it had been lifted. She feels bad about being the cause of that, but wouldn't have done things differently. 

The Doctor has been oddly quiet, she thinks to herself, not sure if she should point that out or not. He keeps sending her these looks when he thinks she isn't looking, as if he can't quite believe what is happening. Donna can sort of understand that, she can, but it seems out of character for him. She expects him to start in with a million questions at any moment, but he just walks silently besides her. If it weren't for the quiet joy she senses through the nearly dormant link between their minds, she would think he was angry with her. She shivers against the cold, though she can't feel it as much as she used to, and tucks her chin into the scarf she threw on as they left the house. It is mostly a psychological reaction, she knows that. It has only been a few hours since they saved the whole of creation, after all, and so much has happened since. 

They trudge along, up the hill until they are standing in a familiar spot. Donna looks around the small allotment, taking it in with new/old eyes. She and Wilf have spent so many hours here, staring up at the sky and looking for aliens. She turns a wry grin on the old man, who is standing by the door to his small shed with a nearly smug grin on his face.   
"Oh you, all those conversations about aliens!" she cheerfully snips at him, letting go of her fellow Time Lord, then walks over and wraps her arms around the grinning human.   
Wilf chuckles mischievously into her scarf and hugs her tightly. "Ah, my Donna, when was I ever going to miss that opportunity to know more about the universe than you? It was a nice change." She huffs playfully into his hat, too fond to be annoyed, and rocks him sideways a few times before stepping back. Donna looks around with a curious gaze. Nothing is different from the last time she was here. She tries to ignore their silent companion as he just stands where she left him; watching them with an odd grin on his face. Donna looks around again, this time with a more critical eye, trying to spot any tells that might give away her TARDIS' location. A slight nervousness takes root, an irrational fear that maybe she wont find it. 

Wilf watches her look around with a smug grin on his face. It should get on her nerves, but it never has, not in the 67 years she has known him. She takes one last look around, before throwing her hands up in defeat. "Alright, Gramps, you and Baby win this round. Where is he?" she asks, trying not to let her nerves shine through in her voice. This is an old game between the three of them, and she is out of practice.  
There is a twinge in her mind, so familiar and welcome that she almost cries in relief. She spins on her heel, and finds herself facing the old shed that Wilf uses to store his tools. She doesn't understand at first. Donna has been in and out of that shed hundreds, if not thousands of times, during her Human life. Wilf brushes past her with a gentle pat on her shoulder, and walks over to the door. He pulls out a key from some pocket and inserts it in a lock. For a moment, she isn't sure that the lock has always been there. Who puts a lock on a ramshackle old shack? It must have been, but then Wilf opens it and she is reunited with her Baby. The Perception Filter breaks its hold. 

The mind reaching out to her is dimmed by years of deactivation. All of her inadvertent visits have given Baby just enough energy to maintain a healthy stasis, to Donna's relief. She just stands there for a moment, letting the symbiotic link she has shared with her ship since it was first activated, reestablish. Once the link is properly stable she scrambles to the door, almost bowling over Wilf in her hurry. The door flies open at her touch, and she is through it with a loud whoop. "Mama's home, Baby!" she cries out, and has to stop herself from hugging the central pillar. Baby hums a warm welcome, and throws metaphysical arms around her in a mental embrace, which she returns.   
The interior of her TARDIS looks very little like the nearly organic Coral structure of the Doctor's old Model TT 40. Her baby is sleek and shiny, made out in shades of copper and moss, and very modern to look at. A proper space-ship she giggles mentally, a Ferrari if there ever was one. Donna feels a bit bad over the thought almost immediately, having grown very fond of the Old Girl during her travels with the Doctor. Baby hums a jealous note in her mind, scanning her memories as she stands there. The tone changes slightly the further Baby gets into her memories, so Donna pays it no mind. 

She hasn't been there for more than a few seconds before she twirls in place and walks back to the door. Wilf is leaning slightly against the side of the shed, looking in with a happy smile on his aged face. The Doctor,on the other hand, is standing where she left him, several paces away. He looks unaccustomedly uncertain, shifting from foot to foot, his hands deep in his pockets, and eyes focused downward.   
Donna rolls her eyes at the sight. "Oi, you prawny streak of nothing! Get over here and meet my TARDIS." She calls out, letting a bit of annoyance into her words, then turns and drags Wilf into the interior. Well, drags is perhaps not accurate, as Wilf needs no encouragement. Donna walks slowly around the console, pretending indifference to whether or not the Doctor follows her command or not, and absently starts up a system diagnostic. Everything looks good, she thinks to herself, for a ship that has spent the last thirty-some years in stasis. It'll take a while before Baby is in perfect order again, and he definitely needs a trip or two into the vortex to refuel. 

The moment the Doctor steps past the threshold Donna is aware of a flash of apprehension-tinged surprise through their link. Baby seems to stutter in response, and releases an audible squeak. Donna hurries to recheck his systems, because that is most definitely not normal, and she is completely unprepared for what happens next. Baby mentally rushes the Doctor, bouncing against his mind like a super exited puppy. He seems confused, but judging by what she can sense of Baby, he reacts with his usual open friendliness. "Erm, your TARDIS is very, friendly?" he says as she tries to make sense of the reaction. Baby has always hated other Time Lords stepping in. Donna had been looking forward to 'calling him off' her friend. She throws a cross glare at the Doctor, who responds with a baffled look. "Not usually," she mutters under her breath. Baby had hated everyone but her, even her fellow pilots way back when.   
"Oh?" he asks with an annoyingly innocent look on his face, and runs a hand through his hair. Donna watches him as he walks towards the console and pokes something curiously. She has to restrain herself from snapping at him. It is hardly his fault, she doesn't think, that Baby has taken a liking to him. 

Donna leaves the two puttering about the control room, walking swiftly down the moss-green corridor towards the maintenance bay. It takes her hardly any time to set up and run the first of the many emergency reconstruction protocols. The stasis had necessitated the expunging of most of the excess data stored in the core, including most of the recreational areas, the bunk rooms and the kitchen. The data-matrix patterns were stored safely, but the reconstruction would take some time. She doesn't look up when the Doctor steps into the large room and looks around, though she keeps part of her attention on him anyway. Donna is a bit surprised at how tense she is over having her friend with her here. 

"So," the Doctor starts, not meeting her eyes, and does that stupid thing he does, swaying back and forth on the balls of his feet. "Um, your TARDIS," Donna is rather annoyed that he doesn't continue past that. She huffs loudly at him, finishes the start up, and walks over to stand beside him. "Yeah, my TARDIS, I call him BABY." She says and folds her arms defensively across her chest, wondering if he is going to get to his point.   
He stays silent, looking at her over the frames of his glasses, with a questioning look. Donna slaps a hand against his shoulder, then moves to the lone cabinet to fetch a few tools. "Yeah, my TARDIS, grew him myself, heck I designed him. We worked with the Temporal Engineering Core, moved to Emergency Engineering when the fighting started." She explains as she throws open the cabinet and grabs the small tool-belt that is hung on the door. She clips it on under her jacket, and slips a few tools, among them her own sonic screwdriver, into the waiting slots. "Well, before the rest of the crew ended up dead, and BABY and I decided to do a runner." She grabs a few doo-hickeys and doodads, then turns and walks out. She hides a small smile as she hears him scramble to keep up. 

"Right, if I am not mistaken, you fly a Model TT 40, probably needs a tune up after travelling with you." She says in a tone that clearly communicates that she doesn't expect him to answer. "Well.." He drawls out in that way he does when he's a bit embarrassed, "I do have some experience with maintenance, Donna, it isn't like I haven't taken care of the Old Girl." Donna flicks a dismissive look in his direction as they make their way into the console room. Wilf wanders in at the same time, wearing what looks suspiciously like a hat from one of their trips. "You might do maintenance, Doctor, but I design and repair. I'll leave the Doctoring to you, but you better let me do the engineering." Donna leaves no room for him to argue the point, though she can tell he wants to. 

He hesitates. "So.." He starts again, and this time she does not restrain the annoyed glare. He catches it this time and hurries on. "So, you still want to travel with me, now that you have your own?" the Doctor asks, and suddenly Donna realises that the quiet is based in uncertainty. She stops abruptly, completely flummoxed by the question. It hadn't even occurred to her that they wouldn't travel together.  
"Well, yeah!" she almost yells a moment later, "Of course, you great lump. I told you I was going to travel with you forever." She pauses, and stares into his eyes, abruptly uncertain of her welcome. "Don't tell me you suddenly decided that forever is too long, when it is ACTUALLY forever?" she asks, not quite as loudly. A huge grin blooms across his face, and she finds herself enveloped in a hug. 

 

>>>


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The TARDIS is in worse shape than Donna expects.

The Doctor practically skips the entire way back to the Mott-Noble home. Donna tries to be annoyed at it, but he’s just so happy that she can’t help but be happy too. BABY is safely locked up on the allotment, the perception filter slipping easily back in place with the turn of a key. His song is a gentle refrain in her mind, chattering away in wordless whispers about everything she’s been through while he slept, and neatly drowning out any feedback she might get from the Doctor.   
Donna and Wilf walk arm in arm, while the Doctor walks slightly ahead like an excited child. He turns back to look at them occasionally, walking backwards, as if he is unsure that they are keeping up. It starts out cute, but by the time they make it to his TARDIS, conveniently parked just across from the Noble house, she is almost ready to slap him. Wilf laughs when she gestures to the Doctor and rolls her eyes. “Silly bugger,” she chuckles as he flings open the blue door and nearly dances into the console room. She tries to follow, but Wilf pulls her aside just outside the doors. 

“Listen, Sweetheart,” he starts, and Donna has an odd moment of being both touched by the moniker and remembering quite clearly that she had told him not to call her that, back when he was a much younger man. “I’m going to go in and join Sylvia for some tea. You and the Doctor, you have your fun, and come back to visit soon, alright?” he says, his trademark gentle smile a bit wider than usual. He is still wearing that silly hat on his head, and the effect is fantastic; she can’t help grin back at him. “Well, I don’t think we’re going very far tonight, Gramps, except into the vortex so I can run some diagnostics on Old Girl here,” she explains with a grin and a fond gesture to the anachronistic blue box.   
Wilf pats her arm fondly. “You might mean to do that, but we all know that isn’t how it goes, usually.” He says with a knowing twist to his lip. “I haven’t forgotten what it was like running with you, Tink, and I don’t think running with him is any different.” She starts to argue that they never got in the kind of trouble that she and the Doctor get into, but can’t quite bring herself to tell that lie, and ends on a sheepish smile instead. “Well..” She drawls in an unintentional imitation. Wilf laughs again, then pats her hands and walks off with a small wave. Donna can’t help but laugh a bit when she hears Sylvia’s muffled reaction to the hat.

The Doctor suddenly sticks his head out of the door. As soon as he sees her, he grabs her by the arm and pulls her inside. “There you are!” he exclaims as he manoeuvres her in, and hurriedly slams the door after them. “Thought I’d lost you for a minute there.” He says, and Donna can tell he means it to be a joke, but it comes out sincere. He seems to realise how honest that sounds, by the look of acute embarrassment that flashes across his face. He stuffs his hands into his dimensionally transcendental pockets and shuffles awkwardly on his feet for about a second, then brushes it off and goes to poke something on the console. She wonders a bit about the poking, really she does.  
The TARDIS hums a fond ‘welcome back’ to Donna, and seems almost as delighted to feel her mental response as her own BABY was to meet the Doctor. Donna files that away under ‘things to be investigated’ and moves over to stand beside the Doctor. He is pretending that he’s busy with something, but Donna knows more about TARDIS’ than he does, and all he is doing is fiddling with the font-size on one of the read-outs. 

She hip-checks him away from the controls with a grin. “Don’t be an idiot, Spaceman, you’ll have to work a lot harder than that to get rid of me. Now stop fiddling with the fonts’” She says and starts up the engines with a few quick commands, completely ignoring his astonished expression. Several times she reaches for a button, or leaver, only to find them missing. Must be a modelling difference, she thinks to herself with a slight frown, but doesn’t think much more about it until they are safely in the vortex.   
Donna has a harder time than she thinks she should, trying to start up the necessary diagnostics. Everything is modified away from standard specs, and there are some things that just seem to be installed plain wrong. Donna’s easy access to the Doctor’s memories is gone, they’ve become distant and a bit faded in her mind, hardly any help at all. She turns to start interrogating the Doctor, only to find him leaning against the railing, arms crossed, and watching her with an absolutely daft grin on his face. 

“What now?” she asks crossly. He runs a hand across his face and through his hair, but keeps smiling at her. “Nothing, Spacegirl.” He answers with a decidedly cheeky tone to his voice. Donna groans loudly and rolls her eyes, but doesn’t follow up. There is something about the TARDIS’ hum that sounds just a bit off key, which is more than slightly disturbing to the engineer.   
“Look, Sunshine, I’d love to banter with you some more later, but right now I need you to walk me through whatever senseless modifications you’ve done to the diagnostic protocols.” She says with a very firm gesture to the controls. He walks up to her, but the idiotic smile stays plastered on his face. “My memories already fading?” he asks her lightly as he starts flipping switches. Donna hums an affirmative, and he nods as if he expected that would happen all along. She rolls her eyes with an exasperated sigh.

The further she gets into her walk-through, the more concerned Donna gets. It is clear that the Doctor has meant well, and has taken all the care a physician can when working with a patient, but TARDIS’ aren’t just living creatures, they at least as much mechanical as they are biological. From a purely biological perspective, the Doctor has taken great care of his TARDIS, but it is very apparent that he is neither an engineer, nor a mechanic.   
There are several components that really are installed wrong, and Donna discovers that many of the ‘missing’ buttons and leavers are casualties of the Doctor’s maintenance. There are still great gaps in the installations that puzzle Donna until a gentle push from the TARDIS herself, brings a faded memory to the fore. She freezes stone still as it plays out.

“Doctor?” she snarls, when he looks at her questioningly. “Yeah, Donna?” She takes a deep and calming breath before answering. “Am I remembering this wrong, or did you really steal this TARDIS from the Museum of Engineering in the Citadel?” she asks, careful to keep her tone polite, lest her temper gets away from her. He can clearly recognise the tone in her voice, given how carefully he nods his head. 

Donna deliberately does not punch his shoulder, but takes some very deep breaths through her nose to calm herself. The Doctor inches away from her, probably sensing her agitation through that innate semi-telepathic sense that all Time Lords share. “Did you bring her by a mechanic first, before flying off?” Donna asks in what might be a reasonable tone. His wide brown eyes lock on her face as he inches another step away, then shakes his head no.  
Donna twists away from him and stalks towards the door, Gallifreyan curses tumbling from her lips as she hurries down the stairs and into the guts of the TARDIS, leaving him looking over the railing after her.

The sight that meets her eyes is a mixture of horrific and awe-inspiring. Everywhere there are strange work-arounds and fix-its that defy common sense. There are several places where the museum plaques are still affixed to the walls, though she doubts that any of them correctly correspond to what is displayed.   
It is easy to think of the Doctor as a genius, but this is proof. Donna is absolutely certain that not a single other Time Lord, herself excluded, would have been able to get this girl working. There are so many missing components that she almost has a panic attack over having travelled in this death-trap. Donna starts making a mental tally of what is needed to keep this grand old girl from spontaneously combusting around them at any given time. This might look stable to the Doctor, but to Tink of the Temporal Engineering Core, this might as well be a break-canister filled with antimatter. 

“Donna?” the unexpected, and very tentative, sound of his voice nearly has her out of her skin in fright. She turns to face him, and her anger melts in the face of his uncertain smile. She throws her head back and pulls at her hair with a groan of frustration. “Have you ever been to an earth museum?” Donna asks him after taking a deep breath. The Doctor nods, clearly not sure where she is going with this.   
“Do you think, if we went to the aerospace museum in America, that we could just grab one of the planes from their exhibits and fly off?” It is very clear that he still isn’t getting the picture. Donna gestures to a plaque. 

“Do you think that all we do, when sending off a TARDIS to a retirement in the museum, is put in some plaques?” she asks, a healthy dollop of disbelief in her voice as she stalks towards him. He shrugs and backs up a step, but not far enough that she can’t reach him. Donna slaps at his arm, for the third of fourth time that night.  
“NO, Dumbo, it isn’t!” she doesn’t quite yell, and strides away, back up to the console room. He follows quickly, and a beginning annoyance leaks across their link. “Well, how was I supposed to know that?” he demands as they make their way back to the console. Donna shoots him a look. “Oh, I don’t know, common sense?” she says, but there isn’t any fire in it. She is too worried to get into an argument. 

She runs the diagnostics again, and this time the strange readings are all understandable. “Rassilion’s left nut.” Donna mutters under her breath, trying to mentally quantify exactly what needs to be done. The Doctor must sense the enormity of having an engineer this distraught over his TARDIS, because he walks up behind her and lays a comforting hand on her shoulder, the earlier irritation gone.  
“How bad is it?” he asks, worry seeping through the space between them. Donna braces herself. “If you had continued like this, eventually your Old Girl here,” she pauses for a breath, pats the console, and leans into his hand. “She would have exploded. Simple as that, she would have blown up, and I have no way of knowing when.” His arm snakes around her shoulders in a half-hug, his shock loud and clear between them. Christ on a crutch, Donna thinks to herself, they could have died at any time.

She takes a deep breath and disengages from their hug, then grabs the keys to BABY from her tool-belt. “We need to get BABY here, right now.” She explains, and sends a mental call out to her tired TARDIS. At least the time in the vortex will do him some good, she thinks to herself. The Doctor looks like he is about to disagree, but doesn’t have the time. The TARDIS shudders gently, and stills. There is a light mental squabble as BABY instructs Old Girl to completely disengage her temporal drives, but it quickly passes. The Doctor is looking around the room in confusion, clearly wondering where BABY is, as he hasn’t materialised in the room. 

“Did BABY just materialise around us?” he asks, a slightly horrified sound to his voice. Donna rolls her eyes, then starts working on the interface that will be essential for repairs to get underway. “Nope,” she replies, popping the p in another unconscious imitation. “I designed BABY over an advanced VOY SR-93 schematic, Search and Rescue. Granted, he is heavily modified, but the basics are still there.” Donna explains, and lets her fingers dance across the console. “He’s interfaced directly into Old Girl,” she pauses and gestures to a new door that the Doctor apparently hasn’t noticed yet. “That door will lead directly into BABY’s console room, makes TARDIS rescue so much easier that way.” The Doctor looks at her like she’s grown another head and hurries over to check. Sure enough, the modern greenish console room is easily visible through the door. 

As soon as the door is open, the copper and moss colour-scheme starts spreading throughout the TARDIS they are standing in, filling out the holes and gaps that has so horrified Donna, and stabilising the failing systems. “Atta boy, BABY! Thanks, Old Girl!” Donna calls out as she sweeps aside some redundant security protocols that the Doctor must have installed. Thinking of, she turns to see his reaction and burst out laughing. He is wearing almost the exact same expression as the day they first met, his brown eyes flying around, trying to tract the changes.   
“Whot?!” he exclaims, his head turning rapidly between the two console rooms. “This is impossible!”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TARDIS' repairs and a trip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: I don't know what the heck happened here, okay?

Donna keeps them in the vortex for nearly two weeks. Even then, she isn't confident enough in the repairs to let the TARDIS' disengage. If they had access to a Coral Grove, or even just a plain old Gallifreyan shipyard, she might have been able to procure and install the missing components. As it is BABY is practically the only thing keeping Old Girl together. There is a palpable sense of relief in her gentle song, which convinces Donna that she has only just been holding on at the edge of her endurance. She doesn't tell the Doctor that exactly, he is already mentally beating himself senseless over not knowing how bad his TARDIS condition has become.

She straightens and pushes a wisp of hair away from her face, then grabs a rag off the floor and wipes off her hands. "There, that better, Darling?" she asks the ship kindly as she scrubs at the odd stains on her hands. What the hell had the Doctor been filling into Old Girl, she wonders briefly and smiles at the grateful/amused hum the TARDIS answers with.

"Oh, yes, much better, Donna." Donna barely manages to not bang her head against something as she jumps in fright. The Doctor steadies her, wearing the most obnoxious grin she has seen on him in ages. "Now, Now, Donna. No need to swoon over me." He says with a waggle of the caterpillar-like eyebrows, hands resting on her shoulders. She snorts and slaps lightly at his arm, shrugs him off, then starts towards the console room. "As if, bean-pole." Donna snips as she inches past him the the somewhat confined space.

"Aw, Donna, I'm hurt. You don't think I'm worthy of a swoon?" The smiles that steals across her face is entirely too fond, Donna fears. She is rather glad that he is behind her and can't see it. "I'm sure there's someone who thinks so." she throws over her shoulder. "Probably someone small and blond, eh?" she teases, sauntering around the central console, adding just a little extra sway to her hips to emphasise their curves. He watches her from the top of the stairs, a slightly shocked look on his face.

She is gratified to see his eyes follow the movement of her hips, and a slight blush work its way up his cheeks. He catches her eyes, then hurriedly grabs at his shirt, miming taking an arrow to his chest. Donna rolls her eyes theatrically.

Old Girl hums her amusement at their antics, but BABY seems confused. Donna gently pats a strut that is comprised of bits of both of the TARDIS'. She finds the contrast of Old Girl's rough coral, and BABY's smooth metallic surfaces quite nice to the touch, and has found herself petting them both at irregular intervals since they have interfaced. "So.." The Doctor starts. Donna sighed expansively, and this time it is the Doctor that rolls his eyes. "I was just going to ask what the prognosis is, Donna." He explains, and Donna can't help but laugh at his exasperated tone.

"Calm down, Sunshine," she pauses and walks over to the central pillar, a bit unsure of how to explain the situation. She looks at the console for a bit, then grabs hold of the smaller view-screen and twists it so the Doctor can see it from where he is standing. The graphs and prints she needs spring up obligingly, even as he Doctor comes closer.

"Right, this is a basic, bare-bones Model TT 40," she says and points, "and this is what Old Girl was missing." A bunch of systems are suddenly highlighted in neon green, and even after having been shoulder deep in repairs, Donna is a bit surprised at how many parts it is. "As you can see, thats a lot, more than BABY and I can replace without a lot of help that we just don't have access to." Donna releases the screen. It twists back to its original place with a slightly plaintive noise. "BABY is filling in all these gaps. As of right now, BABY and Old Girl can function as a reasonably modern all-round TARDIS, so long as we don't separate them." She throws on a cocky grin at her companion and leans against the console, hands resting behind her. "So unless you can magic up half a TARDIS worth of spare parts, or spare a few centuries to grown them, you're stuck with my BABY and me."

The Doctor stares at the graphics still on display on the screen for a moment, looking thoughtful, then turns one of his warmer smiles in her direction. "Well, there are worse fates, I suppose, than to be stuck with my best mate and her Baby." He says, drawling out 'Baby' to sound more like 'bay - bee' and grins mockingly at her. There is a distinctly questioning mental chirp from BABY. Donna absently sends out an affirmation of the Doctor's statement to BABY, feels him squirrel her reply away, and wonders for a moment if she hadn't done the poor thing a disservice leaving him out of touch like that. He's seemed a bit odd since their reunion.

"Right, that reminds me." Donna starts, and turns away from the Doctor to start flipping switches decisively. "We are going to go check on Handy now." She mutters, and tenses for his reaction. He walks up to stand behind her, and Donna thinks she senses him reach out for her with a tentative hand. She must be wrong, because he doesn't touch her shoulder when she expects him to. "What, why?" he sounds more than a bit confused, which actually pisses Donna off, just a tad. She throws a heated glare over her shoulder as she punches in the coordinates, and nearly smashes her head against his nose.

He is much closer than she expected, but that doesn't stop her. "Why do you think, moron?" she snaps at him. "I'm a Time Lady, you dolt, so he clearly isn't even slightly human. As soon as he gets put into a situation where he might regenerate, what do you think will happen?" she asks sarcastically. Donna doesn't actually know, but the thought has been nagging at her for days.

The Doctor frowns thoughtfully at her, pointedly not stepping back to give her some personal space. "You know, you really don't have to insult me all the time," he prevaricates, brown eyes looking off into the distance as he thinks about the possibilities.

Donna waits for a moment to see if he will answer her anytime soon, but he is off in lalaland, so she shrugs and initiates the sequences that will bring them safely through the void and into the alternate reality. It goes much smoother than she really expects it to, given the problems that were inherent in their last crossing, but then most modern TARDIS' do have that ability, and there isn't a Time Lord police agency to enforce any bans. Without any primitive technology, like that reality cannon thing shredding the walls of reality, they should be alright.

She is proven wrong. The TARDIS' tilts oddly, gives a little jiggle, and stops. She throws a somewhat embarrassed grimace at the Doctor, then walks over to the door and opens it for a quick look. The TARDIS' is parked on what looks like the ruins of a garden shed in front of a three story brownstone. Donna looks around, but nothing catches her eye as particularly interesting. The house looks quiet, not a light on or a sound out of place. Donna closes the door, then walks back, hip-checking the Doctor to get some more room at the controls, and reinitialises the TARDIS', one hip lodged against the Doctor to keep him out of the way. What an odd place to stop, she thinks to herself, and checks the TARDIS' console for the name of the small hamlet. Leadworth. What a dull sounding place, Donna thinks absently to herself.

The newly restored Time Lady actually considers waiting for the Doctor to get his act together when they land, but decides that she doesn't actually have that kind of patience. She powers up the scanners as soon as the TARDIS' landing sequence finishes. They've landed in the entrance hall of the Tyler Mansion, it looks like, and it looks like the early hours of the morning. She checks the chronometer and is a bit shocked to realise that the two weeks they spent repairing the TARDIS' has translated to fourteen months in this time stream.

Donna shoulders past the Doctor, who immediately turns and joins her at the door. They share a look. The Doctor raises a challenging eyebrow before they jointly throw open the doors.

The noise of their arrival has apparently woken the household. The sound of running feet approaches from several directions. Donna takes the opportunity to visually check the TARDIS' exterior. She is rather surprised to note that it still looks exactly the same. She can't help but curse quietly to herself. With BABY helping out, the chameleon circuit should have been perfectly functional. She files it away under 'things to be checked up on' and walks over to the Doctor to wait for some reaction from the residents of the house.

It isn't even three minutes past their arrival before doors start opening into the entrance hall. The Tylers, Jacky carrying a small toddler, are soon joined by a young man whose face Donna does not recognise. Rose Tyler is strangely absent.

He is tall, taller than the Doctor, has floppy ginger hair, no eyebrows, and seems to be wearing a bow-tie with his pyjamas. A quick look at the Doctor's face reveals a similar state of confusion, until suddenly something hits her nose hard. 'Time Lord!' her nose seems to scream. Seconds later, she has an armful of tall-and-gangly.

"Mum!" he breathes against her hair. Donna is too stunned to do anything but hug him back, completely flummoxed. She sends out a tentative mental thread to the Doctor full of confusion and shock. He answers in kind, then stops short as a third mind latches on to theirs, a parental bond snapping into place with the force of a thousand elastic bands. Donna barely keeps herself from flinching. "Handy?" she asks, just to be sure, and runs a hesitant hand through his hair.

He giggles, actually giggles, against her. "Well, I go by Terry most days, Terrence Noble." He backs up a bit, but doesn't release her. It's as if he is afraid that she'll disappear if he does. "When did you become an actual Time Lady, mum?" he asks her with a delighted grin, then claps a hand on the Doctor's shoulder, and again there is the quality of checking reality to his movements. The Doctor looks completely stunned, frozen with both eyebrows drawn up, brown eyes scanning the boy, and he really seems like a boy, as if searching for the answers to the universe. "Terry?" he says faintly.

'Terry' nods enthusiastically, blue eyes squinting against the force of his smile.

Donna remembers, after another stunned moment, that he has asked her a question. "Either two weeks ago, or I always was, it depends on your point of view." She replies vaguely, suddenly wondering if she somehow jinxed this trip. "When did you bleedin regenerate?" she demands, a shrill note entering her voice. He notices her distress and gently leads her to sit on the stairs. The Doctor follows swiftly, and takes position right next to the two. Terry explains that it has been months, something about a freak accident at Torchwood mortally wounding him.

The Tylers watch them for a moment, then Jackie groans loudly, bites out some sarcastic comments under her breath, then drags her family away.

Donna hardly notices, the horror of the situation sticking in her mind. What if he hadn't regenerated, she mentally gibbers to herself. They would have been too late to help him. They would have come here only to visit his grave. The newly minted parental bond actually makes her panic worse for a moment, until she figures out how to send a proper probe at his mind. He gamely allows her to see the memory of the accident, which calms her somewhat. The mind that has so latched onto hers is very similar to the Doctor's, but at the same time it is very clear that he is at least half hers as well. There are peaks of her pragmatic thought pattern woven into the more recondite swirls of thought that match up to the Doctor, plus a whole new level of hyperactivity that Donna is sure must come from the Doctor as well.

"How do you mean, Mum?" he asks her curiously, so she tries to explain as well as she can, given her state of shock. He seems utterly delighted by her story, and half-hugs her again. He is full of questions, this one, and by the time they are reasonably caught up, Donna is almost perfectly at ease with him. The Doctor has remained quiet throughout their conversation, his mind a distant swirl of thoughts gently brushing against both of theirs. Donna doesn't have the presence of mind to ask about Rose, not even as the trio saunter into the TARDIS' and set off home.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are tense aboard the TARDIS'.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter this time.

Terry bounces around the TARDIS' like Tigger on crack, is Donna's thought, watching her son, and oh my god she's a mother now. It's a big thought, fills her head with all sorts of things, chiefly regret that she didn't get to see her child grow up. She shakes off the thought as unproductive, then goes back to watching Terry flutter about, hands going everywhere. The Doctor joins her, leaning against the jump-seats. She rolls her eyes and pulls him down to sit beside her. His attention is so focused on their son that he hardly seems to notice.

There is a puzzling uncertainty to Terry's actions. Donna sees him reach out to tweak some control, then hesitantly pull back his hands several times. It could be that the repairs are throwing him off, but he doesn't ask, and eventually reaches out to touch the central pillar itself. There is a swell of relief through their bond when Old Girl responds to him. BABY follows the elder TARDIS' lead, which makes Terry twitch in surprise. Donna wonders what her TARDIS has done to surprise him like that, but doesn't ask.

"How much do you remember?" the Doctor asks gently, an almost grim look to his face. Their son startles and turns to them with a slight look of guilt on his face that makes Donna think of someone caught with their hand in the sweets-jar. He looks away and runs a hand through his unruly locks, then stuffs his hands into his pockets in a painfully familiar gesture.

"Well," he starts, and glances at them uncertainly before looking back at his feet. "Everything started fading after about a week in that world," he trails off and scratches behind one ear, still refusing to meet their eyes. "It, um, it stabilised completely once I regenerated, but I've lost," he sighs, "a lot. The details of your lives are mostly gone, or bare-bones and kinda fuzzy." He finishes, and looks up at them with a frown.

The Doctor slumps slightly against her, and pulls out his sonic screwdriver. He runs a few scans, then nods absently. "I didn't even know much about mum, for goodness sake. Just that you are kind and ginger, and love me so much." Terry says, the last bit directed entirely at Donna. He looks so certain in his statement that it makes her hearts swell with emotion. She stands up and gathers her bean-pole of a son in a hug. The Doctor watches them from his seat, so Donna gestures sharply at him to join them. He does, and for a few moment the three of them just stand there, the Doctor still holding the sonic in one hand.

"Well, then, you have your whole life ahead of you now, Terry, no need to worry about not remembering ours." She says in a reasonable facsimile of a cheerful tone. She can't help feel a bit of helpless anger at the situation, unable to really wrap her head around what it must feel like to slowly loose the memories that make up your life. She throws an aggrieved look at the Doctor, not sure where else to put the blame. Unfortunately, he catches the look.

"What?! You can't blame me for this, surely?" he exclaims in indignant surprise. Donna doesn't, but right now she needs to let a bit of the anger out. "Well, who the flippin else am I going to blame? Meta-crisis' aren't supposed to do that, are they?!" she scoffs loudly, and regrets it almost instantly. He does have a rather large capacity to blame himself for everything, egomanical toff that he is. "And then you just left him there, with those, those people!" she nearly screams in his face, twisting away from Terry to get right in the Doctor's face. It's unfair, and she knows it even as the words spew from her mouth. She must hit a sore spot, because the skin around his eyes tightens with fury.

"Well, what about you?!" he yells, and it is probably the loudest she has ever heard him. "If you hadn't been hiding under a chameleon arch, like a coward, I might have thought to check" and he cuts off, then runs a horrified hand across his face. Donna stands there, stunned, his words raining down on the hidden guilt she feels. He turns away from her and stalks a few angry paces, then twirls back, clearly readying another volley. Donna doesn't brace herself, just stands there struck mute.

He stops short, brown eyes locking with hers. Donna is horrified and humiliated to realise that her vision has gone cloudy with tears. She has to fight against the instinct to shrug it off, when Terry places a careful hand on her arm from behind. She can feel his confusion and fear over the parental bond, and suddenly she quite hates herself. God, she is always mucking things up, she thinks as she wipes her eyes with her sleeve. When she looks up the Doctor's face is sadder than she's ever seen it over something like this, and he steps forward with an outstretched hand, but she doesn't let him get close. "Donna, no, wait, I didn't mean.." Is all she hears as she stalks from the room, taking care to stay out of his reach, and slamming the door behind her.

It is several hours later before she feels calm and collected enough to exit her rooms. Well, calm is perhaps not the right word; her injured pride and the guilt over starting the argument in the first place have kept her tense and ready to snap at anything since she stalked out. Donna knows that she should find the Doctor and apologise, or at the very least apologise to Terry. He's been past her rooms, but had left again when she refused to open the door, still too upset to face her son. Old Girl has been giving her the silent treatment, while BABY just seems confused over the tense atmosphere.

Donna enters the kitchen and goes straight for the kettle. She needs tea if she is going to resolve this stupid situation she's put herself in. The kettle started, she readies a mug for when then water boils, then turns to lean against the counter to wait. It takes a moment for her to notice that she isn't alone. The Doctor is sitting at the small table in the corner, a cooling cup in front of him, head resting on his hands. He looks a mess, hair more askew than ever, and a drawn look to his face. He looks so tired and sad that Donna finds her wounded pride seeping from her without her permission. She stands frozen against the counter for a moment before she realises that he hasn't noticed her. That says something about how upset he is, and kicks her guilt into high gear. Donna hates to see her friend this upset, and there is something gut-wrenching about being the one who made him thus.

The whistling of the kettle startles them both. Donna meets his eyes, and tries to convey an apology with just her gaze. The silence between them is awkward and horrible. She turns around and prepares her tea, then carries it over and sits next to him without a word. They sit quietly for a while, slowly relaxing into the others presence until Donna finds herself leaning heavily into his shoulder.

He wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her close. He rests his head on her hair for a moment before sighing. "You know I didn't mean," he starts, and Donna shushes him, "Yeah, I didn't mean it either, Spaceman." She replies. They can't see each-other's faces like this, which is probably a good thing, she thinks. It makes it easier, in any case. She feels him smile slightly against her hair, probably more due to their link than their proximity. "I'm sorry, though, for saying it at all." She says, and hates the way her voice is small and shaky. "I was just so angry, and helpless," she tries to explain.

The Doctor nods against her, rubbing his cheek against her hair. "I know, Donna, we nearly lost him. It was too similar to when we lost Jenny," He says, as if it is as simple as that. Donna feels a slight swell of irritation, but quells it. He cuts right to the core of the matter, and she might feel a bit resentful of that ability of his. She is a bit horrified to hear herself sniffle slightly as she nods. "He showed you, then?" she asks, just to be sure. Terry's regeneration had been caused by an accident, yes, but it hadn't been his. He had jumped in front of that Tyler girl when an energy weapon had misfired. The Doctor trills an affirmative into her hair, and it isn't until that moment Donna realises that they've switched to Gallifreyan at some point. It is comforting, in its own way. "We're okay though, aren't we?" he asks her after they've sat there a while. Donna smiles warmly, though doesn't move. "Yeah, of course we are, Doctor." She says and pats at the hand that is resting on her shoulder. "'Course we are."


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh dear...

“This is not Chiswick.” Donna states flatly. She is standing in the doorway, looking out on a landscape that is not unlike rural England, if rural England was done in dull dark grey and bright amaranth pink. The sky is a brilliant neon green, and though she sees no sun, there are four moons of various sizes cluttering up the view of the exosphere.   
“What? Of course it is…” The Doctor says absently as he flicks some switches on the sensors. She is really going to have to force him to read the manual at some point, because he clearly has no idea what the heck he’s doing, she thinks uncharitably. “No, Doctor, this is most definitely not Chiswick.” She says again, and crosses her arms against the oddly cool draft that is flowing in through the door. The sounds of civilisation drift in on the wind.   
Terry looks up from the data-pad he’s been reading on the jump-seat, then tilts his head in confusion as he catches sight of what is outside the doors. He unfolds his long legs and ambles over to stand beside Donna. He distractedly grabs onto her arm as he comes to a stop, looking around in fascination. He’s been rather tactile since she and the Doctor had their little blow up.

There is a building just visible over a hill, maybe half a mile from where they’ve landed. Donna sends a questioning thought at the TARDIS’ but neither of them answer her with anything useful. She wants to be surprised at their unscheduled detour, but she has been travelling with the Doctor long enough that it is almost routine. Still, Donna is rather surprised to realise that Old Girl has to have convinced BABY to go along with this.   
“Do you know where we are, mum?” Terry asks quietly from her side. Donna looks at him fondly and tries send reassurance through their bond. “I’m sorry, no, Sweetheart. This doesn’t look like anyplace I’ve ever been.” This seems to catch the Doctor’s attention. “What do you mean you haven’t..” He trails off, finally looking up from what he was fiddling with. “Oh.” He says in such a flat tone that Donna can’t help by chuckle. “Seems your Old Girl has corrupted my BABY. Bad influence, you lot.” She teases, feeling the familiar rush of adventure building in her gut. He looks at her with a well acquainted grin slowly growing on his face, a grin that seems to spread onto Terry’s face as well. “It seems pretty cold, you two might need coats.” The Doctor comments mildly. 

The three Time Lords share an excited grin. “Race you to the wardrobe!” Donna shouts as she hurries past her boys. Terry laughs delightedly and follows, his long legs giving her tough competition.

It really is rather nippy outside. It isn’t bad, not to a trio of Time Lords, but a human would have found it freezing. Donna is grateful for her long-coat anyway, because part of her still remembers being human and has trouble letting go of those instincts, but also because it covers her clothes in such a way that she isn’t risking offending any locals. Well, she doesn’t think so, anyway. You never can tell. It is the same coat that she wore when she helped the Doctor free the Ood, which might just be another reason that it is her favourite.  
The three of them are probably quite a sight, she muses, walking hand in hand as if Terry was much smaller than he is. She can almost imagine him skipping along between them as a child. She sends the thought to him, and is somewhat gratified at the wry grin he pays her with. “I’d try it, mum, but I think I might just tip you short-fry over.” He says, voice a bit loud in the semi-quiet. The Doctor, who had been visually scanning their surroundings, turns and gives them a curious look that has both of them breaking into giggles. The Doctor doesn’t seem bothered by being left out of the joke, and gives them a slightly baffled but warm smile. “Whot?” he asks, but Donna just shakes her head. 

They make it over the hill without any trouble, and find that the building that they had seen from the TARDIS’ is a large three story that reminds Donna oddly of that building in Leadworth that they had landed outside of. She dismisses the thought, her eyes roaming the area.   
The building is on the outer edge of a large square, lines with what looks like cobbles, and surrounded by smaller houses at the opposite end. There is a gap between them, which rather makes Donna think that the larger building is some form of civil centre. The buildings are all built in blue-grey stone, with the same dull grey wood of the few trees they’ve seen used for doors and windows. It’s sort of pretty, she thinks, in a monotone way.  
The source of the noise is quickly apparent. A bunch of market stalls are set up in the middle of the square, as well as a small stage. The area is bustling with humanoid figures, all of them clad in various shades of orange and green, ranging from burnt umber to dark forest. They are all wearing tall head-dresses, though there seems to be as much variation in type as there are shades in the fabric, but all of them completely obscure whether or not the figures have hair. They are going to stick out like sore thumbs, Donna thinks with a slightly worried smile.

A few of the figures look up when the Trio makes it to the square, but most ignore them completely. It’s a bit off, but Donna isn’t sure why. They might, after all, see plenty of tourists normally. “Huh, this is odd,” the Doctor says, echoing her thoughts as he looks about with that indelible curiosity of his. “What is?” she asks, and tugs Terry a bit closer. He is just as curious as his father, but apparently lacks even the smidgen of common sense that the Doctor does posses, as he is already walking towards a stall, paying his parents no mind. 

“Hmm?” the Doctor asks, turning his attention back to Donna. She gives him a rather unimpressed look and scoffs. “You said something is odd. What is?” she repeats. He wobbles slightly on his heels, his hands going into his pockets. “Well…” he starts, and Donna knows this is going to be another in their long line of dangerous adventures. She gestures impatiently for him to continue.   
“Well, this looks like Aeckura at some point right after their industrial revolution,” he says and points towards the humanoids, “and these look like Aeckurans, except,” he pauses, looking around them some more. “Except?” she asks, and stuffs her own hands into her pockets, then realises that Terry has freed himself from her grip. It takes her all of two seconds to spot him, talking animately to a local woman in a costume that is just slightly more elaborate than the rest. Terry is at least a foot taller than the woman. She forces down the worry the sight instills. He might be young, but he isn’t a child, she reminds herself sternly.  
“Well, except that this isn’t Aeckura.” He says and points to the larges of the ‘moons’ in the sky. “That, is Aeckura.” He says and shuffles over to stand a bit closer to Donna, his gaze flickering about, already trying to figure out what is going on. Donna looks up at the ‘moon’ then back at the Doctor. “So we’re on a moon.” She says a bit puzzled, but not really that concerned yet. “Maybe this is a colony, or a museum, y’know one of those reenactment places.” She suggests with a shrug. The Doctor makes a sound that could conceivably be agreement, if you ignore the doubtful tone.

The two of them walk about the market place for a while, and Donna looses herself in fascination over the trinkets and other curious things that are for sale. The Doctor sticks close, somewhat unusually, but she doesn’t mind. It’s nice, and in a strange sort of way, domestic. “You haven’t been here before?” he asks suddenly, “I mean to Aeckura?” Donna turns away from the little mechanical toys she’s been investigating, and raises a questioning eyebrow in his direction. “No, can’t say that I have.” She answers mildly, but doesn’t elaborate. He huffs at her in annoyance. “Well, why not? How long have you been travelling with BABY?” he asks. The tone is reasonably polite, but Donna can sort of sense the bubbling interest that he is trying to hide. Donna rolls her eyes to the heavens.  
“I wasn’t really an adventurer, not like you, Doctor. I was an emergency engineer, Search and Rescue, basically. We usually didn’t go anywhere that didn’t have a TARDIS is distress.” She explains with exaggerated patience. “Sometimes we’d get called to a station to lend a hand, but we never really made much landfall, BABY and I, not before it all went pear-shaped.” She turns her attention back to the doodads, finished with the subject.

The Doctor doesn’t get the message. “When did you meet Wilf?” he asks eagerly. Donna huffs and gives up on mentally deconstructing the thingamabobs on the table. She turns around and grabs his arm, then drags him to a bench on the outskirts of the square. She plops down, incidentally pulling him with her, and makes herself comfortable. He’s looking at her with wide surprised eyes when she turns her attention to him with a glare.  
“You want that story, fine.” She bites out, “I met Wilf when he was seventeen, and just inducted into the paras. He’d lied about his age, obviously.” She explains at his astonished look. “BABY and I were the only surviving members of our squad, and quite frankly I only survived because BABY refused to let me die.” Donna pauses, trying to collect her thoughts. The Doctor grabs her other hand in his, offering her emotional support that she isn’t sure she wants. Some wounds are private, she thinks, and feels bad about it. She knows all of his, even if her memories of them are dull and indistinct. 

Before she can continue, their attention is caught by a commotion on the other side of the square. Donna has a really bad feeling about it the moment she realises that she can’t find Terry’s tall form in the crowds. Given that the Aekurans are all shorter than five feet, this is really worrying. “Oh, no.” The Doctor mutters, thinking along the same lines as her, she’s sure.   
They share a look. “You don’t think,” he starts. She gives him a look of complete disbelief, both eyebrows drawn up into her fringe. “What am I saying, of course it’s Terry.” He mutters. They both stand up, and nearly simultaneously pull out their sonics. “Oh, of course it is.” She agrees. Donna fiddles with her sonic for a moment, then glances over at his curiously. “Yours can do a life-signs scan, can’t it?” she asks. He nods as he sets the scanner, sticking some component in his mouth while he adjusts the screwdriver. “Specific life-signs?” she asks. The Doctor gives her a mildly exasperated look and nods. “Well, excuse me, Spaceman, but mine only does general.” Donna snips defensively. 

The crowd has thickened significantly since they sat down, and now they are faced with a wall of Aeckurans when they try to localise the cause of the disturbance. Donna catches the Doctor’s eye, and gestures for him to follow her, then takes off at a jog. They make their way around the perimeter of the crowd. A flash of ginger hair attracts her eye. She is dismayed, but not surprised, not in the least, at the sight that meets them. There, kneeling in shackles, between a couple of burly Aeckurans,in front of the small stage is Terry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I'm doing Nanowrimo again. Must be the constant typing.


	8. Chapter 8

“Oi!” Donna roars, then stalks through the suddenly silent crowd, shouldering past those not quick enough to move out of the way. “Oi, what the flippin hell do you think you are doing to my son?!” Terry looks up at the sound of her voice and meets her eyes with what can only be embarrassment. “Hey, Mum.” He mutters and looks down, a pink flush crawling up his cheeks. Donna chooses to ignore that, and glares harshly at the two thugs that have her son all trussed up. “Let him up, now! and get those chains the hell away from him.” She bellows at the quite stunned looking guards, gesturing empathetically at them in a fury. It clearly discombobulates them enough that the one on the right is reaching for Terry’s chains without a thought.   
“You are the mother of this contemptuous boy?” The woman that Terry had been chattering away at is standing just off to the side. Her voice, which is deep and gravely as any thirty-year smokers, is dripping disgust. “Who are you calling contemptible, lady?” Donna nearly growls, and goes to take a step. The Doctor grabs her arm from behind, keeping her still. Part of her wants to snap at him over it, but the faint whisper of ‘..trust me..’ Across their small link keeps her quiet. 

“What has our son done to so offend you, my lady?” the Doctor asks, sidestepping around Donna. He ends up standing partially in front of her, a rather thin and flimsy shield, in Donna’s opinion. The woman steps forward and examines the two of them as if they were something stuck to the bottom of her shoe, her otherwise pretty features curled in disgust. “Your son,” she starts, and throws a look of disgust at Terry that is rather more extreme than Donna expects, and rather makes Donna want to strangle her “dared to lay hands on the Most Holy Idol.” The woman says, and gestures to what Donna had thought was some small piece of abstract sculpture. It is small and rounded, just barely the size of a beach ball, and resting on the small mound on the edge of the square, looking completely inert. Donna looks at it dubiously, then flicks out her sonic screwdriver, and bleepes it. Her eyebrows draw up in surprise at the readings, before the Doctor suddenly whips out a hand and pulls hers, sonic and all, into his deep pockets.   
“Not now, Donna,” he hisses out of the corner of his mouth, his eyes still fixed on the woman. He seems unusually tense, thinks Donna. Shouldn’t he be blathering away at the natives, figuring things out like he usually does, she wonders, then realises that he is still clutching her hand in his pocket, a deep well of worry thrumming just under the surface of his skin. She reorients on the situation, a bit uncertainly. 

“Alright, so Terry has touched this ‘Most Holy Idol’,” The Doctor agrees, “What does he need to do to make up for it, your ladyship?” he continues in what Donna is sure is supposed to be a reasonable tone. She rather hopes the people of Aeckura aren’t as good at reading Time Lord body language, because otherwise they are going to be making yet another run for it soon. Terry is looking between them with a look that is much too curious for Donna’s peace of mind. Another thug has taken position at his back, this one wielding what looks suspiciously like a battle axe. The light glints off the bare blade, which causes at least one of her hearts to stutter in her chest.   
The woman, some kind of priestess, Donna assumes, smirks at them maliciously and nods at someone behind them. Donna nearly jumps out of her skin when a pair of unexpectedly strong hands clasp her arms to her sides, pulling her hand from the Doctor’s pocket. She lets go of the sonic without a thought. A quick glance shows her that the Doctor has also been grabbed by the arms. Donna struggles a bit, but the Aeckurans are really unnaturally strong for such a small-statured people. 

“Your son will be cleansed,” the woman says loudly, and the crowd cheers, “at the suns fields. You, being found guilty by association, will be cleansed at the morrow.” She finishes with a fluttery arm-movement for the cheering crowds benefit. Under Donna’s horrified eyes, Terry is frog-marched to the tall building, his chains clinking loudly enough to be audible over the crowds noise.  
A beefy hand pushes her so she almost stumbles, the hands on her arms pulling her along, and soon she and the Doctor are thrown into a rather dismal cell in the large blue building. Their guards barely stick around to lock the door, then are off down the hallway. Donna cocks her eyebrows at the Doctor. “Well, isn’t this familiar.” She says with some sarcasm, which he responds to with a frustrated glare. 

“This isn’t really a time for humour, Donna. We need to get out of here before they ‘cleanse’ our son.” He snarls, and paces the tiny room in a few quick strides, running both hands through his hair in agitation. Donna tries the door on the off chance that the lock is malfunctioning, but no, the solid wood door doesn’t budge. She goes for her sonic, only to remember that she’s left it in the Doctor’s pocket, so she turns to look at him, still pacing the small room, eyes roaming the bare windowless walls. “Right then, can I have the sonic?” she asks with a small sigh. He throws her an astonished look. “It doesn’t work on wood.” He reminds her sharply.

“Actually, I meant MY sonic, you prawn. It’s in your pocket.” She replies and crosses her arms, a bit sick of this attitude of his. He looks at her uncomprehendingly, then sticks a hand down and fumbles in the appropriate pocket. He finds it reasonably swiftly, and hands it to her with an uncertain look on his face. “Yours does wood?” he asks as her hand brushes his.  
“Nooo, it doesn’t.” She tells him with a sweet smile, clasping the hand that is holding her sonic with both of hers for a moment. “Metal locks, on the other hand,” she says with a slightly condescending smirk as she gestures to the door and liberates her sonic, “it does those.” He throws a startled, wide-eyed look at the door, then shines one of his thousand watt smiles in her direction. “Donna Noble, you are brilliant!” He exclaims, and almost bounces on his feet as she sonics the primitive lock and leads him from the cell.

The two of them sneak carefully through the house. The holding-cells aren’t in the cellar, if the building even has one, but rather at the back of the house. The Doctor leads the way, having rightfully claimed most experience in sneaking around. There is no back door, no that would have been too easy, Donna thinks, so they find themselves peaking at the front door from just around a corner. Unfortunately the door is guarded by a couple of those little powerhouses.   
They are going to need some kind of distraction, thinks Donna, and shares a wordless conversation with her companion, mostly conducted through a bunch of gestures and facial expressions that leave them right back at where they started. They stare balefully at each other for a moment, then the Doctor grabs something from his pocket and walks forward with purpose. Donna frantically grabs at him, but too late. She sighs in exasperation and hurries after him.  
“Right, gents, as you can clearly see on this paper of pardons right here in my hand, we’ve been pardoned, completely pardoned, no need to stop us as we hurry out of here.” The Doctor says in a machine-gun patter, moving right past the guards while they are still trying to read the psychic paper he is waving at them. Donna gives him a glare, then saunters after him with a confidence she doesn’t quite feel. 

“So, you looked surprised, earlier.” The Doctor enquires suddenly as they hurry to a dark corner of the still crowded square, sending somewhat furtive looks at the apparently dull-wit guards. They are standing exactly where they left them, and seem to have forgotten that anything unusual had happened. She cringes at his idea that this is an appropriate time to have any kind of conversation, but answers nonetheless. “Earlier? Be a bit more specific, for gods sake.” She hisses, eyes and ears on stalks. There is a distant cheering coming from the opposite side of the square to where they had come from, well away from the TARDIS’.   
The atmosphere seems to be distorting her ability to judge distances via sound. There was an odd sort of echo effect that doesn’t make much sense to her, but then a lot of this planet doesn’t make that much sense. “Earlier, you know, when you scanned the, the, the rock-Idol.” He clarifies with his usual eloquence, gesturing in a mildly rounded way as if that illuminates his meaning anymore than his words do. She doesn’t roll her eyes, but only because she feels like she’s been doing that too much lately.   
“The Most Holy Idol, you mean?” she scoffs. He smiles brightly, a bit of his usual humour leaking into his countenance, and nods, “yeah, that.”

Once they are reasonably safe in the shadows, Donna pulls up the scan-results on her sonic screwdriver. The mental interface responds promptly, downloading the data into her head. She sends a copy to the Doctor’s sonic as an afterthought. “Look, here. This doesn’t make much sense to me, ‘cept that it’s transmitting something psionic moon-wide.” She mutters, eyes going to the innocent-looking stone monument. 

“Huuu, that’s not good,” he mumbles as he goes over the readings. There is a sensation not unlike that of a swarm of angry buzzing bees in her stomach at that response. “Whot isn’t?” she snaps, keeping an eye out while he does something to his screwdriver. “Ah, well, you see,” he hems and haws, “The thing about the Aeckurans is, well they are basically pacifist in nature, but also somewhat zealous.” He explains, as much as he ever does. “Pacifistic?” she asks incredulously. “Why do they have guards and prison cells then?” she asks with a twitch of her head towards their recently vacated prison. He mugs a strange expression. “Well,” he starts, “that isn’t an Aeckuran artifact. It’s an Ilk artifact.” Donna blinks in surprise, her mind stuttering slightly. “Ilk? Ilk, as in that blobby thing with the eyes that was running the Edifice?” she asks, caught completely off-guard at the reminder of an old adventure.   
He nods, his mouth contorted in a mystified grimace. “The one I put in its place with a good scolding?” she asks, just to be sure. He can’t seem to help the silly grin that spreads across his face. “Yes, you certainly did, Donna Noble. Would have been lost without you.” He says, as if that is the first or only time she’s saved his scrawny little behind. “And don’t you forget it,” she says quietly, turning her eyes back to the crowd. “So, what is an Ilk doing here?” Donna wonders, “making the Aeckurans worship a, a psionic transmitter to feed off of their…worship?” she continues, worry for Terry increasing as the crowd starts chanting something wordless. The Doctor shrugs, unable to answer her.

Donna throws her hood up to cover her hair, then grabs a hold of the Doctor. They share a nervous look, then start stealthily edging their way around the square. They make their way through the small, nearly nonexistent actually, alleys between buildings, skirting around groups of unconcerned figures. Donna knows that they’ve been spotted several times, but not one Aekuran reacts to them. There are several from the crowd that should have recognised them from their arrest. It unsettles Donna to be so casually disregarded. She can’t help but think that there is more to this than just a hungry Ilk.


	9. Chapter 9

The sound of chanting becomes almost deafening by the time they make it to a proper vantage point. The rolling hills, it turns out, are hiding a rather deep crevice in the landscape. Donna is somewhat disheartened to see what looks like a religious site at the heart of the valley, surrounded by a huge crowd. The smallish town shouldn’t hold that many people, not unless there is some kind of underground complex, there just isn’t enough room. She can’t see Terry in the crowd, not from their vantage point in a small grove of grey-pink trees at the crest of a hill, so she starts looking for any unusual looking groups. The perimeter of the crowd is mere meters away from their hiding spot. The Doctor leans around her slightly, his hands resting on her arms, his body pressing against her back. She wants to snap ‘hands!’ at him, but that would just give away their position, and really she has more important things on her mind at the moment than some slightly inappropriate touching.   
‘…you see anything…’ comes the faint mental question, barely audible but tinged with a sense of familiar worry. She shakes her head, then gestures at him with her sonic, miming running a scan. He cocks a baffled eyebrow, so she pokes him in the chest with one finger, then flicks her head in the general direction of the religious looking site, and gestures with her sonic again. His wide brown eyes do not spark with comprehension. She huffs in annoyance, then grabs his hand, hoping that the increased skin contact will strengthen their link enough that she can get her point across. ‘Specific Life-Sign scan, remember?!’ She mentally hollers, a bit too loudly it seems. The Doctor pulls his hand away like he’s been burned and gives her a pained grimace. Well, telepathy had never been her favourite subject at the academy,she thinks, mouthing ‘oh you big baby,’ at him when he brings a hand to his temple. He glares reprovingly at her, but obligingly brings out his sonic screwdriver, then begins to fiddle with it.

It takes him less than five minutes to do what ever it is he is doing, then turn the screwdriver on the crowd. Donna tenses at the low hum of the scan, but not a Aeckuran reacts. That is actually really starting to freak her out. The more Donna looks at the natives, the more she realises that most of them have no expression on their faces at all. It is like looking at a large congregation of automatons milling about, their mouths thoughtlessly crooning the wordless sound that Donna is starting to doubt is actually a chant. She flips her sonic over to waveform diagnostics mode and starts taking readings, even as she carefully follows the Doctor. He is leading them around the rim of the valley, closer to the focus of Aeckuran attention. The indistinct buildings dissolve into what looks surprisingly like a roman amphitheatre built in the dull grey wood. It matches the dull grey grass so well that it nearly blends in, and if its hadn’t been for the crows and the colourful banners hadn’t been hung, Donna rather doubts she would have noticed it. The building is absolutely swamped, but the closer they get, the more disturbed the two Time Lords become. The natives start looking more and more bedraggled the closer they get to the amphitheatre. Each person they pass looks more vacant than the last. 

The sound is vibrating into her bones by the time they get to the building. The level of anxiety that is drumming through the link is not helping Donna’s nerves any at all. A sudden change in the wind brings a cloyingly familiar scent to her nose. Tapioca/Candy floss, so strong and overpowering that Donna gags. She turns and spits bile into a bush that is growing against the building. The Doctor places a bracing hand on her shoulder, but keeps his attention to the Aeckurans. This close to the building the people are utterly emaciated, their colourful frocks and headgear in rags and tatters around them. They are all facing the building, once brilliant eyes dull and lifeless, mouths open and expelling that same reverberating sound. There is something heartbreaking about this. Donna wants to cry on their behalf, horrified by the empty gazes. 

Inside the building it is the same. Corridor after corridor filled with the forms. The Doctor gestures towards the back of the building, his sonic buzzing wildly in hand. Donna and the Doctor have to squeeze through doorways and inch through the filled spaces, both of them careful not to harm the mindless masses. Some of them are already dead, tilted over next to an uncaring neighbour, mummified in the cool stale air. Donna winces as she steps on something. There is a loud ‘snap’ that is drowned out by the drone but manages to reach her ears anyway. She looks down. A shattered femur rests feebly under foot. She has to pause and take a deep breath to steel herself. A cool hand comes to rest on her own, and she looks up to meet the Doctor’s concerned eyes. She gives him a small smile in thanks for his wordless reassurance. The drone is giving her a terrible bone-deep headache, and she feels the ghost of an answering one in the Doctor. 

The inside of the building was probably beautiful once, she thinks, her eyes taking in the construction with some professional appreciation. Primitive, but well built, and very reminiscent of Roman architecture. It’s internal structure is mostly wood, but the floor is made of the same bluish stone as the buildings in the square, just polished to a smooth shine. There are banners in here as well, most of them grey with dust and age. Some of them have elaborate designs on them, probably denoting some history or perhaps the patron that had donated them, but most are solid colours under the grime. There are so many of them that Donna thinks they must have some kind of dampening effect on the noise, though unnoticeable at this decibel level.   
The closer they get to the back of the building, walking through a vaulted, gently curving corridor, the fewer live Aeckurans there are. It doesn’t get any quieter, though part of Donna thinks it should. There are skeletal forms of adults and children alike in the dust, thinning out slightly, but still blocking their way. Donna notes with some surprise that the high corridor that they’ve been following has a gentle slope down-wards. She glances at a window, only to realise that there are none on their level. One floor up, light flows through some high windows. The building appears to have been dug out of the valley wall.

The two Time Lords finally reach an open door and share a grim look before stepping through. They find themselves in the gallery area of what was once a theatre. There are rows and rows of seats in a large semi-circle facing a stage. In each seat, a dead and crumbling mummy sits, a gruesome testimony to whatever has happened here. The clothing these mummies are wearing is of a different style than the drab, yet colourful style of the natives they’ve met wear. It is more elaborate, more creative. The roof has partially caved in at one corner, letting the planet and moon-light in, green sky clearly visible. The architecture looks ancient and decrepit, but the part of her that was forever changed when she looked into the untempered schism is already drawing up schematics on how to repair and improve the structure. Donna takes another deep breath, trying to remand that part of herself to the deep corners of her mind, and coughs wildly as dust and air borne debris try to congest her lungs. Her respiratory bypass kicks in, much to her relief. 

The stage area seems to have sunk away. There is a deep pit there, deep enough that they need to walk all the way to edge to see the bottom. A shaft of light pierces the darkness like a spotlight. The woman from earlier is pacing the floor, occasionally throwing contemptuous glances at the remains of her fellow Aeckurans as she walks past them. The contrast between the bright area and the shadows is enough that Donna doesn’t seen Terry at first. Her eyes scan the area, looking for signs of movement, of anything that might betray her son’s presence. The Doctor grabs her arm and points into a shadow at the far right of the pit, his sonic pulsing.   
The woman is clearly talking, the movements of her mouth clearly visible, an occasional hand gesture thrown in for good measure, but the droning is still too loud for Donna to make out any words at all. Donna turns her attention to finding a way down there, rather than to what the crazy person is saying. Her sonic whirs in her hand as she does a quick scan. There have been more catastrophic failures of architecture that block their access. Donna grabs the Doctor’s hand in hers again, and pulls him along, making sure to keep out of sight of the woman. A rock-fall has created a possible access route, a pile of debris stacked high enough that a few jumps is all that stands in their way. They slide down the last small drop into a shadow not far from the pacing woman. This is when Donna spots Terry, tried up in what looks disconcertingly like a straight jacket. He is being made to sit in a chair by two thugs. Terry looks away from the pacing woman for just a moment, and catches her eye. Donna smiles reassuringly, and places a finger over her lip. He smiles crookedly in response, then turns his attention back to the woman.

Whatever the purpose of the sound, it is nearly completely dampened at the bottom of the pit by some strange coincidence of acoustics. The sound of the woman pacing echo slightly in the enclosed space, and her ranting starts to come through loud and clear. It takes a moment for Donna to realise that the Doctor isn’t directly by her side. He is edging over to a deeper shadow. For a moment all Donna can see is a wall of darkness under the seating area, but then her eyes adjust. There is another pit there, and clearly her companion has decided to check out what is in it. Donna turns her eyes back to her son’s captor, and realises that she is ranting at something in the pit.   
Donna gives up any pretence of not following the Doctor and hurries after him. The smell of Tapioca and candy floss is stronger here, she notes absently, then stops short at the Doctor’s side. 

There is an Ilk in the pit.

It isn’t anything like the setup that they had encountered on the Edifice. This Ilk is clearly not here by its own free will. It is held down by what appears to be a thick netting, forcing the blobby mass of its body to the ground. There are spikes woven into the netting, long dangerous looking things that are jabbing the creature mercilessly, creating large rents and wounds in its gelatinous form that ooze bright pink blood, somewhat sluggishly. There is a set of long wires attached to the spikes. Donna follows their flow back towards the stage area. They are attached to a generator, in a style that reminds her of those little mechanical toys that she had been looking at in the market place. More of the Aeckuran thugs are working the generator. Occasionally the Ilk twitches violently, but it is completely unable to get free. Donna and the Doctor exchange a look of determination. Whatever the hell is going on here, they have to stop it.

Then, the Doctor gets that stupidly determined look on his face, again. Donna doesn’t have even half a moment to react before he walks straight into the light and catches the woman’s attention. “Now, what the hell do you think you are doing here?” he booms out, apparently shocking the woman senseless for a moment.

Donna feels herself shake with suppressed fury at his thoughtlessness, but takes the opportunity to run over to where the two thugs are holding Terry. She flips her sonic to it’s maximum setting, which is not fatal, but rather incapacitating if she does have to say so herself. The two thugs fall like puppets with their strings cut, purple blood spurting from their noses as the powerful sonic, and incredibly localised pulse, knocks them out. She hurries to undue the bindings of Terry’s restraint, and hugs him to within an inch of his life as soon as she can. A quick pat down to asses him for injuries later, and the two of them turn their attention to the verbal battle that the Doctor is fighting.


	10. Chapter 10

Donna watches in disbelief as the Doctor continues to talk to the crazy woman, voices raised to try to drown each other out. The woman has quickly gotten over the shock of their arrival and is screaming obscenities at the Doctor, her face contorted and ugly in her frenzy. Donna rather wants to join in, angry beyond belief that he has put himself in danger like this. She knows that anger is mostly powered by fear, and she is very aware of the reason for her fear. The last time they had faced an Ilk it had almost killed him, and not twenty meters from where he is standing another Ilk lays.   
Terry grabs her shoulders to stop her from just walking up and slapping the Doctor silly, and gestures to the side. The thugs are still knocked out flat, but that isn’t what he is referring to. There is some sort of console attached to the primitive generator. Donna glares angrily at the Doctor, but he doesn’t acknowledge her, so she turns and hurries to the console, Terry in tow. She may have a certain dislike for the Ilk as a whole, but this particular Ilk hasn’t done anything to her, and she can’t stand to see any creature in pain. 

She strides over and pokes at the console briefly. It doesn’t match the generator at all, much more organic and oddly crystalline than the bulky primitive brass thing it is attached to. She looks inquisitively at Terry, who shrugs at her, just as ignorant about the origins of this set up as she is. Her sonic has the thing down and out in a shower of sparks, no real effort needed, and suddenly the droning sound stops. The four of them freeze at the deafening quiet, the last syllables of the Doctor’s argument echoing strangely in the hollow space. For a while there is total silence, until Donna’s ears start picking up a wheezy faint sound. She turns to look for the source. It is the Ilk, fighting for breath, even as it lays there, no longer twitching from the electrical shocks. 

“Look! Look what you have done to this poor creature!” The Doctor shouts, gesturing expansively, his face rigid in fury, eyes locked with the womans. The loss of the psionic field seems to have taken a great deal of anger out of her argument. The woman is looking at the Doctor like she has never seen him before, cold eyes scanning his face dispassionately and clearly find him lacking. “Poor creature?” she asks sardonically, cocking an eyebrow and throwing a cruel mocking grin at the captured Ilk. “That poor creature,” she coos, “that came here to feed on the pathetic inhabitants of this backwater.” She says with a sneer. “That poor creature.” She says again, no pity in her face at all, only thwarted rage.

“It landed here, years and years ago, in my father’s fields. Dug itself down, too wounded by a botched landing.” She scoffs angrily, “It offered my father power, if he would only feed it. Of course that old fool agreed.” Donna looks back at the console, suddenly realising that it must come from the creatures ship, though she wonders what must have happened to cause it to crash like that.   
“My father, he quickly realised what that thing was doing, forcing itself into peoples minds, making them obey. He built this theatre around it, ostensibly to let it heal in peace.” She gestures dismissively to the architecture, clearly unimpressed. “Healing was the furthest thing from his mind. He starved it long enough that it could put up little fight, then enslaved it.” 

Sounds start to trickle down from the world outside. It starts quietly, but slowly grows in volume until it is more deafening than the former droning. It takes a moment before the sounds make sense to Donna’s sensitive Time Lord ears, then abruptly they detangle into the sounds of feet running, scrambling madly across the floor above, and the sounds of screams and cries as the Aeckurans come to themselves. For several long minutes that is all Donna can hear, even as the woman keeps ranting at the Doctor.   
“I was young, and sick of being the daughter of a rankless farmer. He grabbed at power, and when it was well-established, I grabbed it from him.” The woman says, a sort of glee in her eyes and voice as she speaks of her betrayal of her own father.  
There is a certain unfamiliar disgust on the Doctor’s face as he looks at this person who speaks so dismissively of torture and enslavement. It sends a twinge of something into Donna’s hearts, makes them contract painfully to see him so upset. Her earlier anger at him is gone, erased in the face of his mounting anger and disappointment with this woman. He always wants to see the best in people, wants to believe in the better nature of sentient species everywhere, she thinks sadly. It kills him a little every time he is proven wrong, some part of her mind whispers, heart-sick on his behalf. 

Terry has been taking full advantage of the distraction provided, and has snuck up on the woman without any of them noticing. Donna only realises what he is about to do when she sees him lifting his arms. He strikes so quickly that the woman has no time to react, his arms constricting around her neck and restricting airflow. She struggles viciously, and manages to get a good knock against Terry’s face before she is rendered unconscious. Terry gently lowers her to the floor, then steps back with a satisfied expression on his square face. “Well, I was sick of listening to her, anyway.” He murmurs and he wipes his hands against the straight-jacket he is still wearing as if his hands are covered in something dirty.  
The Doctor is looking at their son in complete surprise, his jaw just a bit slack, Donna not far behind. Terry looks at both of them in confusion. “What?” he ask, blue eyes flicking back and forth between his parents. “What, she’s fine, I just knocked her out, I swear!” he exclaims when neither of them say anything. Donna tries to think of an appropriate reply, not sure she would have been as merciful, but aware that the Doctor has a rather strict view on killing. 

She is distracted by the Ilk. It has started twitching again. Donna sends a quick reassuring look at her son, then hurries over to the edge of the pit. There seems to be no easy way to get down to the creature. The remains of an old ladder lay snapped at the bottom of the pit, no help at all. The Ilk is clearly not well, not at all. It squirms a bit more, and Donna realises what it is trying to do in a flash of insight that has her insides freeze. “Wait, Ilk! Please, we can help you!” she calls out, searching for another way down, which brings both of her boys attention to the creature. It is writhing, but not away from the spikes. Without the energy from the generator, something has gone loose. The Ilk is pushing against one of the spikes embedded in its flesh. Its squirming brings it to brace against some rubble. It doesn’t stop once the spike is braced, rather it gives one large heave and slams its body against the spike. There is a loud squelching sound that Donna is afraid will stay with her for the rest of her life, and the Ilk moves no more.   
Donna whips out her sonic and finds the appropriate setting to run a life signs scan. Her sonic, a proper emergency engineers sonic, has a setting specifically for scanning in between rubble and ruins for even a faint sign of life. It can’t distinguish one from another, all life being of equal value in a rescue situation, but it should pick out the Ilk just fine. It finds the thrum-thrum-fush of an Ilk heart, but not easily. The rhythm slows significantly, even as they listen, until (35 seconds, 12 microseconds later) it completely stops. Donna hasn’t been aware of the rush of Time so acutely since unclasping the Chameleon arch, and for a moment she resents it with all her being. She wants to be just Human Donna again, who wouldn’t have known. It would have been just a moment, too fast for her to conceptualise properly.  
The Doctor places a comforting hand on her shoulder, and is joined by Terry moments later. Donna twirls and buries her face in the Doctor’s shoulder, her eyes burning with nearly repressed tears. His arms snake around her, their comforting weight helping to ground her against the helpless feeling that is forcing her eyes to water. Terry joins the embrace, both of her boys humming comforting sounds at her as they stand there. 

It takes them hours to get the situation in the village under control. They’ve trussed up the woman who was at the centre of the whole issue in Terry’s straight-jacket, and hand her over to what is left of the elders-council. It had been three planetary years since the trouble had started, and many hundreds of inhabitants of what was once a religious retreat are dead. It takes some doing to insure that the Ilk is treated with the same compassion that the other victims are shown. Eventually Donna ensures that the Ilk is burned along with the remains of the Aeckuran dead, if on a different pyre. They are all three exhausted by the time they make it back to the TARDIS’. 

Donna storms in through the doors, utterly fed up with the day she has just had. She isn’t much surprised when the outside door leads into BABY’s console room instead of Old Girl’s, certain that the TARDIS’ have sensed her mood, and her need to tinker. She ignores her companions, still a bit angry at both of them, and strides purposefully down her own long corridor until she reaches the newly retrofitted workroom. The place is large and full to the brim of various doodads and doohickeys. The Tinker doesn’t pause even as she notes that many of the components in here are probably stored in Old Girl, rather than BABY. The Two TARDIS’ have integrated to a higher extent than she had expected, but then she hadn’t ever done a full on integration like that before.   
Tinker hastily clears a workspace, her mind already going through what she needs to do to improve the Sonic Screwdriver to be of more use. Perhaps if it had been able to carve stone, she thinks to herself, they might have been able to save that poor creature. The plans for various methods of doing exactly that start building in her head, before another possibility pops up and she starts work on that without pause. No need to carve if you can simply displace, The Tinker tells herself with quiet efficiency.

“Donna.” the Doctor is standing in the door when Tinker looks up from where her hands are busily assembling a quantum vacillator component. There mus be something off in her expression, because the concern on his face increases. “Donna?” he asks, and there is more uncertainty in that word than there ever has been. It breaks through the haze she has descended into, if only a bit. The Tinker closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Donna opens her eyes, and meets the concern with a watery smile. “Yeah?” she asks, her voice tired and her face drawn. He looks a bit lost for a moment, tipping on the balls of his feet.   
“Are you alright?” he eventually asks. Donna can’t help but laugh just a bit, her utter fatigue leeching into her voice. “As alright as I always am, Spaceman.” She sniffles unintentionally, and hurriedly wipes at her nose. “It would be nice if, just once, no one actually dies, y’know?” she mumbles with a sniff, not meeting his eyes. Her hands are busy again, slipping a bit of this onto that component, tweaking hither and yon. She hears him take a hesitant step, then stride towards her.

“Donna, I’m sorry.” He says when he is directly by her side, as if that makes any sense at all. Donna looses her grip on the Sonic, which clatters to the workspace top noisily. She just stares at it for a moment, surprised that her hands have failed her, then turns to look at the Doctor. “Sorry?” she booms. “You’re sorry?” she repeats, even as the Doctor winces and looks to the ground, the overly familiar look of guilt contorting his face. The punch to his shoulder surprises both of them. “Don’t you go getting a swelled head, Spaceman,” she growls out, “that there was not in any way or form, your fault.” The look of guilt doesn’t quite abate, much to her annoyance and private heartache. She pokes him again until he meets her eyes, big brown eyes, sad and filled with too much death, meet her own blue-gold. “Not. Your. Fault.” She repeats, then pulls him into a crushing hug. He returns it, and for a moment she wonders if he hadn’t said that just to have an excuse to comfort her. “Not yours either, Donna.” The sneaky bastard.

She savours the physical contact more than she should, she knows that. The Tinker had never been overly physical with other Time Lords, but her time with Wilf had taught her about friendly camaraderie, about how important hugging could be. This doesn’t quite feel like a friendly hug to her, she realises with surprise that she tries her best to keep from sharing. The Human Donna had loved the Doctor as much as the chameleon arch had allowed her to, but within the friend limit they had set up. It had been set up specifically to not allow herself to create too long-term attachments, in case she needed to open the fob-watch. Still, Donna swears to herself that Human-her had never felt anything like attraction to the skinny git. Time Lord Donna, on the other hand, is utterly horrified to find that there is a stirring of romantic affection.   
“Donna?” the Doctor asks her again, and she suddenly realises that she has tensed up in their hug, her mental shields on full strength. He pulls back just a bit to look into her eyes with concern. “It really wasn’t your fault. If we hadn’t come along, who knows how long that poor Ilk would have been there. At least he is free now.” He says, voice full of conviction. Donna nods absently, horrified at herself, and halfway to convincing herself that it is just stress-related. He lets loose one of those warm smiles and pulls her close again. Donna stands there and wants BABY to just swallow her up. Of course, she thinks to herself, of course she’s chosen now to loose her mind.


	11. Chapter 11

For a few hours after their return to the TARDIS', it is quiet. Not eerily quiet, like it can sometimes get, but just quiet. Donna is spending some time fiddling with her Sonic in the workroom. Well, she would have, but really she is just panicking, her Sonic in hand as she paces the workroom back and forth. The Doctor had spent a short while 'comforting' her, apparently better at reading body-language than Donna has ever given him credit for, and misreading her sudden anxiety as guilt. She isn't going to disabuse him of the notion, not at all, thinks Donna to herself on her twenty-fifth circuit of the reasonably large room. Her hearts are beating a mile a minute, her palms are sweaty, and she has a distinct feeling of nausea clawing its way up her throat. She has her mental shields drawn tight around her, unwilling to share this latest humiliation with her ersatz family.   
The Sonic Screwdriver twirls absently between her fingers, and makes little clickety-click sounds every now and then, when some part or other jingles lose, since she hasn't bothered to reassemble it properly yet. The Tinker, being from a proper if very minor house, had been raised to find romanticism rather vulgar. Her parent's had seemed like they loved each other, but it had been courtly love, not romance. Granted, Donna had never liked her 'mother' all that much, which might be interfering with her interpretation, but she had been a good match for her 'father' in every way that mattered.   
The only role-models she had for this kind of thing were Wilf and Eileen, and later Sylvia and Geoff, and neither of those couples were all that useful examples.

"Mum, are you alright?" Terry asks from the doorway. Donna nearly jumps out of her skin in fright, but manages to keep a hold of her Sonic this time. Terry laughs a bit at her reaction, and then walks over to her and throws a long arm over her shoulders. Donna returns his half-hug, a reluctantly amused smile stretching across her face. They stand there for a moment, basking in each other’s company, before he looks down at her, his kind eyes clouded with worry. "I'm fine, Terry, I'm just," she pauses in her answer, and wonders how to give a satisfactory answer that doesn't also give away her problem. "Tired." She finishes, unsuccessful in her endeavour. She doesn't fool him for a second, her motherly instinct, and isn't that an odd thing to have all of a sudden, tells her.   
"Are you sure, Mum? Did the Doctor say something to upset you?" he asks her again, and Donna realises that she has never heard him refer to the Doctor as his father. "No, Sweetheart, no. He was just trying to help me with what happened on Aeckura." She explains, squeezing him gently with one arm and wondering if she should bring up his form of address. The look on his face tells her he is still sceptical of her answer. "Really, I'm just a bit tired of going on adventures where people die." She prevaricates, even more uncertain of her course of action now. She has more than herself to think of now, with Terry here. What if he doesn't want the Doctor as a father figure, she thinks a bit frantically. She then mentally scoffs at herself for thinking that far ahead. 

Unfortunately, her words have a rather dramatic effect on Terry. He clutches her to his side, his blue eyes wide with a sudden fear. "You aren't leaving us, are you?" he nearly whimpers, his voice just slightly higher pitched in fear. Donna wraps her other arm around him and brings him into a real hug. "No, of course not, Terry." She murmurs into her son's shoulder. "I'm never leaving you, and I have promised to travel with the Doctor forever, you know." She tries to inject a bit of humour in her voice. There is a gentle mental prodding at her shields, and she realises that he has probably taken her mental silence a bit badly. She sighs deeply and resigns herself to her son learning her shameful secret. BABY then gently knocks against her shields as well, more tentative than he has ever really been. Donna throws her shields wide and her mental arms around them both in an echo of their physical embrace, ashamed of herself for keeping them out.

There is a sudden start of surprise from the gangly boy in her arms, then he relaxes against her. "Oh" he responds eloquently to what he senses from her. She briefly wonders if he can make more sense of her emotions than she can, and are they really that obvious that it takes her son half a moment to recognise them. Donna rolls her eyes, but resolves to handle this in an adult manner. "Yeah, oh. It happens to the best of us, no need to mention it to anyone." She says in her best no nonsense tone.   
He pushes free and looks down on her with the most confused expression she has ever seen on his face. "But, mum," he says. She interrupts him before he can get any further. "No Need, Terry. Your father and I have an arrangement. We're best mates, and that's all." She says firmly, a sliver of regret making it into her voice without her permission. He doesn't look convinced. "But, mum," he tries again. Donna looks at him, trying to put the weight of her motherly authority behind her words. 

"No, Terry." It is with some mild irony that Donna realises that she is channelling Sylvia in that moment, then despairs when she realises that this particular tone never worked on Donna. She's become her quasi-mother, isn't that just grand. Donna is therefor really surprised to see Terry nod reluctantly. "Alright, mum, if that's what you want." He says, and Donna chooses to ignore the disbelief in his voice. "Sometimes it isn't about what you want, Terry, it's about what you can get." She murmurs, a bit upset that she has shared something like this with her son, when she hasn't even had time to digest the discovery herself. He hums disagreeably into her hair, a sound that is echoed mentally by her BABY, but doesn't argue.

Dinner is rather tense that evening, and it seems that the Doctor is the only one who hasn't realised why. BABY and Old Girl seem to be squabbling quietly, keeping their humanoid charges out of it firmly. Terry keeps sending her these really sad looks over his chicken tikka masala, until she sends him a rather severe glare in response. Then he starts to pout, which is much more effective with his new face than it would have been if he still looked exactly like his father. She sighs huffily, which he returns with a small glare of his own. Donna acknowledges that she is having trouble with the whole 'act like an adult' portion of her plan. How would Sylvia handle this, she thinks, and resolves to take him aside to have another private conversation about this after they've eaten.  
The Doctor keeps looking between the two of them, clearly understanding that something must have passed between them, and looks entirely unsure if he should interfere. Donna just looks at him for a moment, daring him to bring up the tension with a raised eyebrow the next time he flicks his gaze to her. He looks down and away once his eyes meet hers. The chicken. She is about to lay into him about his nosiness when Terry speaks up.

"Um, so, Mum, did you and," he pauses for a spilt-second, "Dad know each-other on Gallifrey?" he asks, apropos nothing at all. Donna can't help but scoff in derision, which does dispel some of the tension.   
"Huh, no, sweetheart." She says with a small laugh. "I highly doubt a Lungbarrow like your father has even heard of my house, let alone me in particular." Donna says with a snort. The Doctor straightens in his chair, perking up like a puppy shown a treat. "Why? I haven't heard of you, personally, but what is your house?" he says with his usual curiosity, completely ignoring her derision towards his house. She rolls her eyes at his challenging tone. He clearly expects her to name some house that he has heard of, so he can wow them by being a bleeding know-it-all. 

"I'm a Bluegrove, one of four." She throws out, entirely willing to meet his challenge. There is a moment of pure victory when a completely blank look crosses his face. "Bluegrove." He says, at a complete loss. "Yeah, Spaceman, Bluegrove." She replies smugly. Perhaps she shouldn't be smug that she comes from a tiny house with no renown, but in this instance it is rather rewarding. His eyes flicker as he stares into the middle distance, no doubt searching his memory thoroughly. Donna watches him, her smug smile melting into a fonder one as the seconds pass. "Bluegrove?" he mutters again. She just nods, and then rests her chin on her hand as he ponders. She is contemplating how sweet a victory it is when he suddenly snaps his fingers. "Wait, wait, wait, wasn't Moshdrygilden a Bluegrove?" he exclaims, much too excited by his brain-wave than is strictly appropriate in her opinion.   
She lets her face fall onto the table top with a small groan. "How the hell do you know about Moshdry?" she asks, her face pressed against the wood. She doesn't have to look up to see him straighten proudly. "I had Gallifreyan History with him at the Academy." He says promptly. She groans into the wood grain. 

"Who's Moshdrygilden, mum?" Terry asks curiously, the earlier pout gone from his tone. "Moshdry was my older brother." She replies. "He was loomed a few years before I was, so technically my cousin, but our parents had somewhat untraditional views on procreation. I kept being surprised that our mother never tried to breed biologically when the sterility 'curse' was cured." Donna explains, then raises her head back up and leans back in her chair. She crosses her arm, and resolves to ignore the idiotically smug look the Doctor is giving her. She is caught a bit off guard when Terry continues. "What happened to him?"   
She shares an uncomfortable look with the Doctor at Terry's question. "Well, you can tell from his name. Moshdrygilden, not a title." She pauses to see if any connection is being made so she doesn't have to continue, but Terry's just looks back at her with genuine curiosity. "He took his turn at the Untempered Schism, and went mad. Completely cracked. He killed himself a few weeks before he could graduate." She finishes, a vague feeling of loss and regret passing through her. This had all happened well before she had understood about friendship and familial love. "Oh." Terry look a bit stunned, so she reaches out a comforting hand, and a comforting thought once their skin meets. 

Donna refuses to acknowledge the surge of relief when the TARDIS' signals that they've arrived at Chiswick. She stands a bit faster than she intends, then strides out to the console room, glad to be done with the subject. The Tinker had been fond of her brother, in the same remote manner she had been fond of her family. She hadn't realised that there was more to family until Wilfred Mott had taught her so, many years later. It made her uncomfortable to think of how detached they had all been, now that she knows better. Donna strides directly past the consoles and throws open the door, fully intending to keep walking until she reaches the Mott-Noble home.   
"Oh, for the love of all!" she shouts in frustration, throwing up her hands in disgust at the sight that meets her. The sound of running feet herald her companions. Terry and the Doctor come to a stop besides her, a wide panicked look that is really endearingly similar, on both of their faces. The trio stand there, once again looking out at a place that is definitely not Chiswick.


	12. Chapter 12

Donna looks at the scenery just outside of the door to the TARDIS', then turns and backhands the Doctor's arm. "Really, Spaceman?" she barks, "I know that the navigation-systems work, you plonker! Am I really going to have to give you driving lessons?" she asks, trying to put as much of the disbelief she is feeling into her voice.   
"What? No!" he responds indignantly, flinging his hands out in emphasis. "I have been flying Old Girl for over seven hundred years, Donna. I don't need lessons!" Donna doesn't believe that, doesn't think even he believes that. "Oh, really? Then maybe I should take over, because something keeps going wrong when you navigate!" she yells into his face. She then quickly steps back and into the TARDIS', hoping that neither of the men in her life notice the sudden flush across her cheeks and hears her hearts fluttering like mad over her proximity to the Doctor.

She stomps over to the main console, double checks the Time rotors, triple checks the coordinates that the Doctor has entered. The Doctor strides over and stands just a few steps back from her, arms crossed over his chest defensively. Donna ignores him, or tries to. The sudden awareness of her feelings has made this much harder than it should be, and there is at least a few mental processes keeping tabs on the Doctor at all times now. Actually, weren't they always there? She wonders to herself, and then pushes the thought as deeply into the recesses of her mind as she can.   
Emotions were so much easier to deal with when she was just human, she contemplates sullenly, without centuries of repression in her baggage. It had been hard enough figuring out how to deal with the friendship she felt for Wilf, those first few months they travelled together. Dealing with this realisation was a hell of endless mortification. 

"Donna, are you alright?" the Doctor asks softly, and walks over to stand beside her. She gives him a questioning look, then looks back at the readouts. "You've seemed a bit angry lately," he pauses for a moment "with me, I mean. More so."   
She hates the self-doubt that seeps from her friend, and herself for putting it there. Donna fidgets for a moment, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, and then turns a somewhat strained smile on the Doctor. "I'm not angry with you, Doctor. I might be having a spot of trouble remembering how to handle emotions the Time Lord way." She explains, then turns her attention back to the console. "Well," she drawls in an attempt to divert his attention from the admission, "it looks like you've put in the right commands, so I really don't know why we aren't in Chiswick. Sorry about that." She says with a negligent flick of her hair, in an approximation of her usual tone.

He reaches out and places a hand on her shoulder. His dark eyes are serious when he speaks. "Why would you want to?" he asks in that tone of his that is both sympathetic and bewildered, and Donna loves him a bit more for it. She has no idea how to explain it to him, this odd and confusing swirl of emotions that the Time Lord in her wants to control, while the human she has been for thirty-some years wants to live. "Because I don't know how to do it the human way anymore, not with all these thought!" she exclaims, and turns away from him.

"Who am I, Doctor?" she asks him her voice trembling just slightly. "You are Donna, Donna Noble." He answers after a brief pause, clearly believing he is stating the obvious and no less bewildered now. "Am I? I was The Tinker for centuries before I was Donna Noble." She pauses, fighting to find the right words to express her confusion. "Everything was so much easier when I was just silly unimportant Donna, but I'm not anymore. I don't know who I am." 

The Doctor looks at her as if she's lost her mind. "Donna, you were never unimportant." He says with conviction, placing both of his hands on her shoulders as if he is going to shake her. "You were never unimportant." He repeats, stressing 'never' heavily, his voice a little rough.   
"You are Donna Noble, and you are The Tinker as well. Coming back from a chameleon arch after living under one for a while is hard, I know, but the person underneath was still you. At your core, you are just as much Donna Noble as the Tinker." He explains firmly. "The thoughts, the feelings, the memories, the coping mechanisms, they are real." She stares at him for a while, searching for any doubt in his face and finding none.   
Before the silence can get awkward, he cracks a fond smile. "Trust me, I'm a Doctor." Donna returns the smile with a watery one of her own, then straightens and tells herself to pull herself together. "Well, enough with this chitchat, Spaceman." She says with a slight sniffle that she tries to hide by clearing her throat. "We might as well see where we've ended up this time." The Doctor offers up his arm, which Donna takes with a grin, and they stride back out of the door, arms linked. 

Terry is poking at what looks like a pretty basic terminal just in front of where the TARDIS' is parked. It looks familiar, but for a minute she can't quite place it. Then her eye catches on to a metal plaque with a string of numbers, then a red digital calendar-clock. 

Messaline. They are on Messaline. 

The pit of her stomach doesn't drop out, but it is a near thing. It's been months since they lost Jenny, but the grief is still close to the surface, and Donna is having a hard time understanding why the Old Girl would bring them here. Surely she understands how hard this is on them, Donna wonders, eyes blankly looking at the glowing red numbers denoting the date. There is something tickling at the edge of her mind, her sense of personal time being battered by universal time. It hasn't been months since they were here, she realises with a pang. It has been mere minutes. 

The Doctor is at her side, tense and unhappy. His eyes are fixed on the clock as if he can make it change- as if the sense of Time that makes them Time Lords can change the date. He is silent as a stone, even when they are approached by the colonists. They must have heard the TARDIS' re-materialise, thinks Donna, even as she greets them. There is only one way for her to answer their questions.   
"We would like to attend Jenny's funeral." She says solemnly to the young man who speaks to them first, the same one Jenny had taken a liking to. He nods sadly and leads the procession back to the Theatre where they had left Jenny. Donna's hearts clench harshly at the sight of her lain out on a bier, still dressed in the green fatigues that she had been born, and died, in. The three of them walk over and stand at her side, silent and solemn in their grief. Terry has never seen her before, not really, but Donna can feel his stark sense of loss as he stands by his half-sister's side. He gently reaches out and rearranges a lock of blond hair, gentle as if he is afraid to disturb her slumbering form. 

Perhaps rightly so. As soon as Terry's hand touches Jenny, her mouth falls open and releases a cloud of golden regenerative energy that should be frankly impossible. Terry freezes, hand still extended halfway between them, but the Doctor is moving a spilt second later, his Sonic Screwdriver flashing. He runs scan after scan in less than a minute, all the while muttering 'Impossible, impossible' under his breath. He turns to Donna with a frantic expression on his face. "She is trying to regenerate. Donna, I don't know how, but she is trying to regenerate." He says in a bewildered hopeful panic. Donna snaps out of her stupor, and brings out her Sonic to run her own scans. She gets the same results as the Doctor does, except... "I don't think she has enough energy, Doctor." She says faintly, eyes on the young woman who has started glowing faintly. Too faintly.   
Tears are pooling freely in her eyes at this point, and a feeling of how utterly unfair this is to her friend. Without enough regenerative energy, all Jenny can do is burn up. It'll crush the Doctor, Donna knows, to lose her again, and like this. A cruel loss, giving hope and then taking it away in the same breath. The Doctor hasn't looked at her, still trying for a solution, his mutterings gone inaudible even for a Time Lord. "No, no, we can save her, Donna." He says suddenly in the tense quiet that has descended on the room, turning and meeting her eyes with a look that is so hopeful that Donna's hearts break a little. A few tears slip free of her control, but she nods anyway. "Alright. Tell me what to do." She agrees.

He claps his hands together, then gestures for Terry to step back. Their son does as he is bid, looking every bit as upset as Donna feels. There is a tiny glint in his eyes when Donna looks at him, as if his father's hope is enough to wake his own. The Doctor looks up at her, suddenly more serious than hopeful. "Remember how Terry was born?" he asks her, then continues before she can answer. "We need to do that again, a controlled release of regenerative energy into her system, like I did with the hand. She'll have to regenerate properly, her body has taken too much damage by the length of time she has been," he pauses and gestures wordlessly to the still form. "But we can do it, Donna. If we share it between us, we can save her." He says firmly, and clasps her hand in his, already glowing with the energy he is dredging up. 

"Doctor, I don't remember how, not anymore. I've only regenerated once." She tries to explain in a desperate panic. He doesn't answer verbally, his mind surging against hers and pulling up the memory of the meta-crisis in blinding detail. Donna gasps, the small link between them suddenly growing at an exponential rate and filling her head with exactly what she needs to do. She follows his lead, and feels the burning sensation of a regeneration start at the tips of her fingers. The world is engulfed in a brilliant golden light.   
The hand that the Doctor is clasping burns with the fire of Vesuvius, and for a moment Donna can't hold it in. The Doctor pulls her back from the edge of regenerating herself, and shows her how to do this, how to force it where they want it to go. It's not easy, not at all. It feels like trying to push back against a tsunami, but somehow they manage. The blinding golden light flows from them and into the still form on the bier. Jenny is engulfed completely is barely a moment. Donna keeps pouring energy into her for several moments before she feels the Doctor pull her back. 'That's enough, Donna.' He whispers mentally, the thought tinged with exhaustion.   
She comes back to the present, her time sense telling her that barely thirty seconds have passed, to see Terry staring at them in what might be disbelief. Behind them, a group of colonists are bowing down to the ground as if in prayer. 

The golden light around Jenny is slowly dispersing, leaving a clearly breathing Jenny behind. The first thing Donna notices about this new regeneration is that she is ginger, the same exact colour as Terry and herself. Her face looks almost exactly like it did, if rather covered in freckles where there had been pale skin before. Her nose is also slightly more aquiline that it was. Donna can't help but stare.   
"She looks just like you." The Doctor says, a note of giddy relief and amazement in his voice. "Ginger, she's ginger!" he exclaims, and pulls Donna into an excited hug. Terry joins in on her other side, and the three of them stand there for a moment, looking down on their miracle. 

 

>>>


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mood Whiplash.

There is a certain bond between a daughter and her father, Donna muses as she watches the Doctor look over Jenny. Donna had been the closest with Geoff, she remembers fondly, of her foster parents. There is a slight worry in her, that she wont develop a proper maternal bond with Jenny, that Jenny will prefer the Doctor being her lone parent. After all, Jenny didn’t see her that way, hadn’t before. It’s a bit stupid, but Donna can’t shake it. She hadn’t been close to either of her mothers, and had never developed a filial link to the Bluegrove matriarch.  
Jenny’s not quite awake yet, drowsy with regeneration sickness, her now brown eyes looking around the theatre without any focus or recognition. Red hair, brown eyes. She’s beautiful, Donna thinks, gently running a hand across the girl’s forehead. There can be little doubt that she’s passed some genetic material along during the assisted regeneration.   
Last time they had been here, Donna had joked about ‘dad-shock’ at the Doctor’s expense. Perhaps she’s been in ‘mom-shock’ since Terry created their bond, since he claimed her as his mother. Her emotions had certainly been all over the place. Heck, she’s been reeling emotionally since the Earth was stolen. It’s a wonder that she’s managed to keep it as together as she has. 

“Mum, um, I think we might have a problem.” Terry whispers, and breaks her out of her introspection, nearly leaning into her side and thrumming with a mixture of awe and some anxiety. The noise levels in the room have increased somewhat since their entry, and Donna realises why when she turns to look at her son. Out of the corner of her eye she notices movement. A lot of movement, and the murmurs of people who are trying to be quiet. Donna freezes for a millisecond, trying to think of how their rescue of Jenny would have looked to the uninitiated, and then turns her head to look over her shoulder. Donna blinks in surprise at the sight that meets her eyes, then closes her eyes and takes a deep calming breath.  
A crowd has assembled.   
There are small groups, human and hath alike, around the edges of the room murmuring excitedly, but being very quiet about it. The benches in the centre of the room are filling slowly, people in the smaller groups breaking off and sitting down at random intervals. All eyes are on the quartet of Time Lords on the small stage. Oh shite, thinks Donna. There is a rather uncomfortable likeness to their previous adventure happening here.   
The young man that Jenny had taken a liking to steps forward when he notices Donna’s attention has drifted to the crowd. She and Terry share a slightly disturbed look, then Donna turns to meet the young man as he walks up to them. A quick glance behind her shows that the Doctor is completely engulfed in running a med-check on Jenny. 

The boy doesn’t speak. He drops down on his knees in front of Donna and Terry, and prostrates himself. He is joined by several others. Donna brings a hand up and rubs at her face with a groan. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asks him with a clear dose of exasperation in her tone. “Get up from there.” She demands when he doesn’t respond. The boy scrambles to his feet, a bewildered look on his still-smiling face. The others follow more slowly, apparently confused by the command. One Hath has to be prodded. He meets her eyes for several seconds, a gleeful smile on his face, before abruptly dropping his eyes to look at her feet. Terry snorts out a small laugh, still leaning slightly against her right shoulder. Donna gives him a chiding look over her shoulder before she turns her attention back to silent boy in front of her.  
“Well?” she demands. The boy startles and looks up at her again with wide worshipful eyes. “I- uh, that is, I’m showing respect?” he asks in a tone that clearly communicates that he has no idea. “To the Mother Goddess?” he continues when Donna doesn’t react beyond a cocked eyebrow. Donna purses her lips to keep from laughing. Terry is practically sobbing into her shoulder with his effort to keep his own laughter under control. Donna can’t help but look back to see if the Doctor has caught this. He looks up from Jenny just then, but doesn’t seem to have a clue about what is going on. He is nearly glowing across their link with happiness. Jenny is sitting up on the bier now, a bit wobbly, but getting better.

Donna accidentally meets Terry’s eyes, and they both lose it completely. The boy is looking at them with a careful grin, as if he isn’t sure if he is allowed to laugh along, while Donna and Terry laugh themselves sick. She can barely breathe, even with her respiratory bypass. By the time the Doctor and Jenny make their way over to see what the fuss is about, Donna and Terry are both crying with laughter, calming down only to set each other off again when their eyes meet.  
“What’s going on?” the Doctor asks with a grin as he joins them, casually slinging one arm around Donna’s shoulders, the other pulling Jenny along and keeping her reasonably steady. That sets Donna and Terry off again. The Doctor has a large, if somewhat bewildered, grin on his face when Donna finally manages to get herself under control. Terry is giggling helplessly into his hands. Donna asks the young man to repeat himself, unable to trust herself to say it without breaking into another fit of laughter.

“I just told Her Holiness that I was showing her respect?” the boy tries to explain. The Doctor looks at Donna questioningly. “Her Holiness?” he asks gamely. The boy nods eagerly. “Yes, the Mother Goddess.” He says and gestures respectfully at Donna. The Doctor grins a bit wider and nods knowingly at the boy.  
“Ah, yes. The Mother Goddess here.” He says and tightens the arm around her shoulders. “Very good Mother Goddess, Donna is. Shes given me two children already.” He says. There is nothing across their diminishing link to indicate insincerity, just happiness and some slight tinge of humour. Donna doesn’t have time to think anything of it, because in the next moment the Doctor is dragging Jenny and her towards the door, gesturing for Terry to follow with a flick of the head. “Well, the Mother Goddess, the children, and I really need to be going now. Ta!” He calls out. The mystified crowd parts to make room for the Time Lords as they stride out, Jenny stumbling groggily and Terry giggling madly the entire way back to the TARDIS’. 

They manage to get Jenny situated in the med-bay reasonably quickly. She falls asleep almost instantly, which Terry seems to take as permission to go off to his own room, stopping just long enough to hug Donna warmly on his way out. “Night, mum.” He murmurs, his voice a bit rough from laughter. She half-hugs him and accept the small kiss to her cheek with a smile. “Goodnight, Terry,” She replies. “Oi, your dad too.” She reminds him when he’s already halfway out the door. The Doctor looks up from the readouts that he’s studying with a distracted ‘hmm?’, but returns the offered hug earnestly. 

“Y’know, if he doesn’t want to call me that, he doesn’t have to.” The Doctor says quietly, several minutes later. Donna isn’t sure how to respond to that, and spends a few seconds smoothing out Jenny’s blankets. “You’re his father.” She ends up saying. The Doctor nods, but doesn’t look at her. “He was made from me, yes, and I would love to claim him as mine.” He starts, Donna interrupts. “What do you mean? don’t you have a parental link?” He looks up hesitantly, then shakes his head ‘no’. Donna is stunned. “Why not?”  
The Doctor looks at her pensively. “Well, you have to understand…” he trails off, searching for words. “He doesn’t have most of my memories, not anymore. However, I think there is some emotional transference.” He says slowly. Donna nods encouragingly, not sure where he’s going with this. He drops the eye-contact and fidgets a bit. Donna can’t help but think he looks adorable, even when he is uncomfortable. She would have rolled her eyes at herself, if they weren’t in the middle of an actual adult conversation.  
“I don’t necessarily have the best opinion of myself, you see.” Her friend continues, “and the vestiges of that might come out as resentment in Terry.” The Time Lord explains, a faint blush spreading up his neck. The Doctor meets her eyes, his own full of old shame. “I’ve done a lot of things that I’m not proud of, Donna, I’ve killed a lot of people. I don’t blame him for not jumping with joy over having me for a father.” 

Donna walks over and draws him into a hug, resting her face on his shoulder and feeling him do the same. “Don’t be stupid, Spaceman. I know he feels nothing of the sort.” Donna murmurs into his neck. “We’ve both done stuff that we’re not proud of. He knows better than that, or he would resent me too.” She says softly, rocking the two of them slightly. There is a disbelieving snort against her skin that sends tingles down her spine. She tenses and tamps down her reaction reflexively, then relaxes into his arms again. “Have you forgotten Pompeii? I pushed that button right along with you. I killed those 10.000 people just as surely as you did.” She murmurs, trying not to notice the fact that he smells quite nice actually.   
“Donna, I’ve done a lot more than that.” He replies quietly, but there is relief and comfort flowing sluggishly across their small link, physical contact strengthening the nearly dormant link. Donna feels a surge of longing for the deeper connection that they had shared not a few hours ago. The Doctor doesn’t react to it, to her relief.


	14. Chapter 14

Donna is continuously surprised at the gaps in Jenny's Knowledge. Her newly ginger daughter knows a great deal about war and weapons, but the strangest things make her stumble.

"Is this right, Donna?" Jenny asks from the changing room. They've stopped off at the Groanick Intergalactic Mall, sometime in the 47th century to stock up the wardrobe. It may hold a great many things, but Donna holds the firm belief that a girl should have at least a few specially bought items available. This great moon-sized mall seemed the best place to get that done, or that's what the Doctor had claimed. She had been sceptical at first, but a quick scan of the place, still safe in the TARDIS' had calmed her nerves. There didn't seem to be a single thing happening here, except what could be happening in any mall, anywhere in the galaxy.

Donna tilts her head in past the privacy screen to have a look. Jenny is looking skeptically at the way somewhat baggy shirt is hanging on her frame. "I think it might be a size or two larger than you need, Jenny." She supplies as Jenny twists to get a better view in the wall-mirror. The younger woman turns to look at her in confusion.   
"But the tag says that it is the same size as that blue one." She says and points to a lovely tunic that they have purchased in a different shop. Donna pauses in her automatic reply, a bit stymied at how to explain that clothing-sizes still haven't been standardised for humanoid shapes. She tries to explain, but she doesn't quite see why the discrepancies haven't been dealt with by now, so it comes off rather convoluted. The Time Lord part of her just wont admit to not knowing such a simple thing. 

Her explanation is cut off by a loud crack that echoes through the mall, even above the noise of the thousands of people shopping. Donna turns towards the sound, her mind filling with dread. Knowing their luck, this will be something serious. Jenny sticks her head out of the changing booth a few seconds later. "Donna? What was that?"  
Before she can respond, a second and third shot ring out, followed by the sound of screams and panic starting somewhere not far off from where they are. "Put on your own shirt, darling, we need to find the boys." Donna tells her, already packing up their previous purchases and stuffing them in her dimensionally transcendental pockets. 

They barely make it out of the shop before the rushing crowd overtakes them and they are swept up. Donna grabs a desperate hold of Jenny's hand, but the seething crowd rips their hands apart and they are separated within minutes. She tries to yell to the younger woman but the sheer panicked noise drowns out her voice. Jenny reaches for her, fear painted on her face, but is pulled away from her. Donna loses track of Jenny soon after. 

There are alcoves through out the mall, places for cash-points, toilettes, pay-phones, that are the same as any mall in all of time and space. Donna manages to slip into one, fighting through the beings running for their lives. By the time she reaches an alcove, she has a black eye from a stray limb, a torn shirt, and a terrible temper. She takes a moment to catch her breath, mind ablaze with anger and fear for her family, and the telepathic bleed through of a riot. Her head pounds with it.

Her sonic buzzes wildly in her hand as she starts to scan the area, waving it in the general direction that she expects Jenny went. The boys are together, as far as she knows, but her youngest has nothing to prepare for something like this. A riot of thousands is vastly different from a small civil war on Messaline, and Jenny's new regeneration does not have the same instincts that her original body would have. She has to be Donna's primary concern.  
The Sonic beeps with an irritant tone. Donna checks the read out. Jenny is nearly a mile west of her position, closer to the TARDIS'. A second beep tells her that the Doctor is running a scan not too far away, north west of her. She runs a quick program to send him her coordinates along with a small message that she is searching for Jenny. A surge of agreement flashes through her mind from their bond, and a short message beeps in. 'Terry is w/ me. Meet at Tardis.'

The crowds are still surging wildly around her. Beings of all sort are rushing blindly past her, though a few are seeking refuge in the alcoves near by. A few shove their way in with her, though apparently her temper is enough that there is a distinct gap between them and Donna. For a moment she is at a loss to know how to react, how to go about making her way through the tides panic. She steels her spine with a deep breath, and throws a glance at the huddle of frightened beings. There is a great deal of fear in their expressions. If Jenny hadn't needed her, Donna would have thought to do something for them. As it is, she barely gives their plight a thought and pushes through the crowd, face thunderous and anxiety thrumming through her veins. 

More shots have the crowd surging, sending her slightly off course and pushing her into a wall. For a moment she is afraid that she will be crushed to death, into a new body. The thought makes her a bit nauseous, remembering all too well the strangeness that had gripped her and kept her off balance for months after she had gotten this body. It makes her angry. She whirls around, back against the wall and forces herself to take a deep breath against the fear, then scans the crowds again, quickly locking on to Jenny's signal.   
'Mum!' Terry's mental voice rings through her mind as she weaves and ducks to get towards her wayward daughter. 'Mum, Dad is hurt!' Her son floods her mind with the sight of the Doctor being flung against a wall, barely in sight, and then fall to the floor unconscious, swiftly overrun by the crowd. Donna's hearts stutter horribly in her chest at the sight, and she struggles against the urge to change direction and rush towards him, her breath leaving her with a painful sucking sensation. 

Jenny needs her, she thinks to herself firmly, heedless of the tears that are streaming down her face. There is a muddled sort of response to the mental probe she sends the Doctor, enough to tell her that at least he is alive and waking up. She feels downright faint with relief, even if she can't quite release her worry. The Doctor will be fine, she knows, he is after all a grown Time Lord. She repeats the thought to herself a few times, and tries to ignore the little voice that snorts in disbelief.  
Donna sends a thought towards her son, not quite reassurance but as close as she can get at the moment, then pushes forward again, fast this time, less careful of the other beings. Her family is in trouble, she can't think of anything else at the moment. 

It takes her a while before she spots a familiar head of red hair in the crowd, and even then she checks it with the Sonic to make sure it really is Jenny before pushing to get to her. Just as she reached Jenny, the girl turns around as if sensing her arrival. Her face is full of fear and confusion, but as soon as their eyes meet, they fill with relief.   
"Mum!"   
Donna can barely hear her over the churning masses, but the mental probe that is launched at her along with the words is unmissable. As soon as contact is established, before Donna can get more than a step closer to the girl, Jenny lashes her mind onto Donna's in a familiar bind. 

'Mum!'Jenny calls to her mentally, a mix of fear of the circumstances and a child's certainty that 'Mum will fix this' flowing from her.  
Donna pushes harder at the crowd, determined to get to her daughter and utterly heedless of who might be in her way. Mentally she is shoring up the fledgling gossamer link, pouring reassurance and love into it, tying it down next to the link she shares with Terry. Just across from it, the slight golden thread that connects her to the Doctor vacillates worryingly. Donna doesn't let more than a fraction of her mind focus on that.

"Jenny!" she calls out, and viciously elbows some tall being that tries to push her along the flow of the crowd. She pulls the young woman into her arms as soon as she is close enough, and turns her slightly to shelter Jenny with her body. There are numerous knocks against their bodies, elbows and other limbs flying in the panic. She needs to shelter her daughter. The physical contact cements the nascent bond in a rush and she finds herself a mother of a terrified teenage daughter. "Shhh, Jenny. We'll be fine, we just need to get back to the TARDIS' and track the boys, alright?" 

It seems the bond, or perhaps her presence, reassures Jenny much more than Donna expected it to, because suddenly Jenny feels a lot less afraid. She releases Donna with a shade of the bright smile she wore a lifetime ago, brown eyes scanning Donna's face with worry that the girl can't quite hide. "Alright, Mum." 

Part of Donna is awed that this young woman has such faith in her, a bigger part is concerned with getting them out of this alive and in the same bodies that they arrived in. Her eye is swelling, but it hasn't shut yet. Everything is sore and her legs feel like she's been running for hours instead of pushing through a riot, but she isn't seriously injured. They'll be fine.

Donna wraps one arm around Jenny's waist, and uses the other to grab her Sonic Screwdriver. First thing she does is run a quick scan of Jenny, but somehow the girl has escaped any injury. The relief is pushed aside for now as she scans for a route to their destination. They've drifted a bit away from the TARDIS' again.   
They start moving in the right direction, but it takes much longer that either of them are comfortable with, drudging through the swirling eddies and fast moving streams of people, fighting against a current only to be swept along like flotsam in a stream by the next. The noise is still deafening, but as time passes it becomes less panicked. Anger and confusion are replacing the fear. In shops, corners, and alcoves, large groups of standing people break up the rush like islands, frightened people clumping together.

Just as they finally reach the TARDIS', Donna notices a Judoon out of the corner of her eye. A quick turn of the head reveals a group of them, and more off in the distance. They seem to be trying to restore order, herding people around and setting up check-points. She hurries to pull Jenny into the TARDIS', shutting the doors in the faces of some curious onlookers, then runs a tired hand across her face. The bonds she shares with Terry and the Doctor have been worryingly quiet since she found Jenny. Donna tries not to let the pit of anxiety in her gut expand enough that Jenny will feel it.

"Mum, what's going on?" Jenny asks, all full to the brim with bewilderment and worry, and pulls her out of her milling thoughts, unintentionally spilling them across their newly formed bond. 

Donna brings up a hand to massage her temple against the ache that has started there, then shakes her head in answer to Jenny's question. "I don't know, Darling, though from the sound of weapon-fire, I think we can assume that whatever it was, it didn't go too well." She says with a strained smile. She walks up to the console and starts the scanners up, uploading the last readings from her Sonic Screwdriver as she goes. "Whatever it was, we need to find your father and Terry." 

>>>


	15. Chapter 15

The private hospital computers are woefully unequipped, in The Tinker’s opinion, and grabbing the information she was looking for is childishly easy, even from the console room of the TARDIS’.

Donna bursts past the flimsy doors between her and her wayward partner. They part with a clatter that is surprisingly quieter than she expected, but she strides on, Jenny following closely at her heels. 

She sees Terry first, standing by the small and overly crowded information desk, arguing viciously with what appears to be a doctor, if the universal white frock is anything to go by. 

The doctor, a Hremian if Donna isn’t mistaken, looks more than a bit exasperated with her son, who looks extremely frustrated. The exchange ends before Donna gets there, the doctor walking away resolutely while Terry runs both hands through his hair and gestures at the sky as if arguing with a deity. 

He catches sight of her shortly afterwards, his anger melting into a hugely relieved smile that Donna can’t help but return. She grabs him into a tight hug the moment he is in range, rocking him slightly from side to side. 

“Thank goodness, you’re alright.” She mutters into his shoulder, then holds him away to get a better look. There is a slight cut across the bridge of his nose and a bruise forming on the right side of his face. He returns the look, the relieved smile turning into a look of concern as his eyes take in the swelling of her eye and her other injuries. 

“Mum, are you alright?” he asks her worriedly, his eyes jumping to take in Jenny at her shoulder, who by large looks unscathed. He reaches for her anyway, laying a hand on her arm, then seeming to change his mind and pulling his sister into a half-hug. Jenny leans into the hug, a worried frown on her face as she scans her brother. 

She is already nodding and about to reply when Jenny stiffens and steps away from Terry with the angriest frown Donna has ever seen on her face. Jenny slaps him across the shoulder, hard, before either of them have time to react.

“You, you stupid, stupid, you idiot, Terry! I was worried sick!” Jenny says and wipes angrily at her moist eyes, then turns away from her brother and crosses her arms with a sniff. Terry stands there, one hand rubbing his arm, and looks at his sister in utter bewilderment. 

His bewilderment starts to shift to anger, Donna notices, as she comes out of her shock. She has to step in before either of them do anything stupid.”Oi, You will apologise to your brother for hitting him this instant, Missy. We do not deal with our emotions through violence, do you hear me?” she says firmly, turning Jenny towards her with both hands on her daughter’s shoulders. 

Jenny looks at her with some disbelief, and Donna distinctly hears Terry snort. The new-to-parenting Time Lady closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, praying for patience, then meets her daughter’s eyes steadily and sends out a mental probe towards both of her children. Terry obediently joins their impromptu huddle, though Donna notices that he seems a bit weary of standing too close to Jenny. 

“We do not deal with out emotions through violence,” she repeats, and looks back and forth between her children, and moving one hand from Jenny’s shoulder over to Terry’s.  
“I know you’re both worried about each other, but under no circumstances will you hit each other in anger, is that clear?” She follows that up with a strong warning through her bonds with them, trying to make it clear that this is nonnegotiable and any infractions will be followed by punishment.   
Once again she wishes she had a better maternal role-model, aware that this will actually require more of a conversation once they are all safely back in the TARDIS’.

The children sent back somewhat timid mental responses, both nodding though Terry looked a bit put out that he is being scolded as well. Jenny apologises to a pouting Terry, while Donna sighs deeply, then pulls both children in for a reassuring hug. They only struggle a little before releasing the resentment that has been flowing between them and relaxing into the hug. 

“We will be having a conversation about this when we get home, but first we need to get your father.” She tells them as she releases them. They nod with matching looks of reluctant acceptance on their faces. It really is remarkable how alike the two of them are, despite their differing origins.

Terry straightens up and adjust his jacket, his eyes looking around as if embarrassed by what has just transpired, then refocuses on Donna. “That’s what I was talking to the doctor about, mum,” the young man pauses and glares somewhat absently towards the information desk, “They won’t release dad against doctor’s advice to me, since he isn’t awake yet, and I can’t prove I’m his son.”

Donna feels both of her eyebrows ascend towards her hairline, worry for The Doctor gnawing away at her at the news that he is still unconscious. 

“Right then, you two wait here.” She says firmly, then marches over to the desk and starts talking. The poor Duty Nurse across from her never knows what hits them, but Donna has the plasteel pad in front of her to sign in but a moment, and a doctor is already on their way to bring her to her Spaceman. 

Somehow the paperwork has the public legal name that The Doctor hasn’t used in millennium on it, both in what passes as galactic standard and common Gallifreyan. It makes her pause in shock for a moment, but then she shrugs internally. The Planet might be locked away, but it wasn’t always and they had been a rather prolific species, both in trade and in science. It shouldn’t surprise her that this place, the default ‘shopping’ location in the TARDIS’ data-banks, knows enough to identify them. 

On the other hand, if she is reading this right, this hospital will only release him in his unconscious state to his parents or spouse. ‘Fucking hell,’ she thinks to herself, already tired and in no mood for the following charade. She puts down her legal name in the spouse fields, then pencils in the children in the Next of Kin section. She alters the names just slightly so they match, adding her own house to The Doctor’s legal name, his to hers, and both of theirs before the ‘Noble’ in the children’s names. 

‘There, that should stave off any questions.’ She thinks to herself as she hands the plasteel back to the nurse, who barely glances at them before filing them. It takes another fifteen minutes waiting in the busy lobby before they are led to the section of the Emergency Room where The Doctor is. 

The first thought in her head as the doctor draws back the curtain is that her spaceman looks ridiculous with a black eye. He is laying on a perfectly normal looking hospital bed, once again proving the universality of some things, still in his suit and drooling slightly on his pillow. A quick scan with her screwdriver tells her that there is no damage at all anymore, except the superficial, though the heightened numbers also tell her that he must have had a concussion when he came in.

“Right, Mrs Noble,” the doctor starts, paging through his pad to find the right information, “we have treated a severe concussion and a detached retina in your husband with great success. He should be fine once he sleeps off the anaesthesia, though in truth we only had to knock him out because he was being difficult. Doctors make the worst patients, and all that.”   
The doctor mutters with a tired attempt at humour as he signs off on The Doctor’s release. He smiles and nods at them, then gestures for the orderlies that Donna has only just noticed, to assist. “Would you like to purchase a wheel chair or would you prefer that the orderlies wheel him to your ship instead?” he asks.

Donna buys the wheelchair, and the orderlies pour the still sleeping Time Lord into the chair. Donna wheels her Spaceman down to the lobby with the air of a long suffering wife picking up her husband from the pub after one too many drinks, and barely finds it in herself to pull up a more reassuring mien when the children hurry to join her as they leave. 

They make it back to the TARDIS’ with no trouble at all, the bio-ships welcoming them home with a worried series of prods and murmurs. She rolls the sleeping time lord up a suddenly sprouted ramp, in through the console room, and down the suddenly very short corridor to the med bay, then bends down a bit to be at face level with her favourite martian.

“Alright, I know you’re awake, Doctor, so you might as well drop the act.” She says loudly in his face. His eyes blink open and he smiles at her with immediate remorse, though Donna will have none of that. “Right then, check yourself out, get to it, chop chop,” she says, gesturing the complicated instrumentation of the med-bay, instead of following her first impulse, which is stuck somewhere between hitting his arm and kissing him. Couldn’t do that, and having just told off her children for violence, she decides to just stand up and stride past the children and into the kitchen to put the kettle on. 

There is a huge weight that is only now lifting off of her hearts. There is no thought to her actions as she starts the water boiling, instead her mind is partially riding along on a wave of relief, though the other part is listening. Both physically as the children’s relieved chattering is heard down the corridor, and mentally as her family reconnects after yet another troubled pit-stop. 

She is still riding on the wave of relief when the voices quiet. She doesn’t really notice, mindlessly throwing tea bags into cups and pouring water, until an amused voice snaps her out of it.

“What’s this I hear about us being married?” The Doctor asks in a deeply unattractively smug tone. He is leaning crookedly against the door-strut, arms crossed and the stupidest expression Donna has ever seen on his face. 

She resists the urge to smack him, but only barely. Instead she sets the kettle down harshly and glares. “Completely fine, you said,” she starts, “Nothing happening there today, you said,” she continues, arms tightly held against her body to avoid any impulsive violence, “No problem splitting up, nothing will happen, Donna!” she imitates his voice with a yell, her hands finally coming up in parody of his effusive gesturing.

The Doctor looks progressively more worried and annoyed at once. At her mocking, he rolls his eyes and looks away from her. “Right, I know I worried you, but do you have to do the whole ‘I told you so’ thing right now?” he asks and rocks slightly on his feet while looking down. 

Donna deflates. She rubs a hand across her eyes, winces at the touch to her tender skin, then gestures for him to join her at the table. He helpfully carries his own cup. “The Children?” she asks him as she slumps down on the bench. 

“Sent them to watch a movie in the library.” He answers as he nudges her in to make room for him on the bench. She moves reluctantly, and only barely leaves him enough room.

“So, married?” he asks after a few moments spent in blissful silence.

Donna groans and rolls her eyes. “That’s right, Mr Theta Sigma Lungbarrow Bluegrove Noble.” She answers in Gallifreyan, even using the obsolete signifies of marriage and status that she knows he probably hates, then hides her smirk in her tea at his horrified expression. 

He mouthes the long name a few times, as if trying out the taste. “I don’t know, shouldn’t it be Bluegrove Lungbarrow Noble, do you think?” he asks, then sips his tea, apparently lost in thought over the ridiculous name. 

Donna cracks up, too tired to stay annoyed with her thin rake of a companion and too relieved as well.


	16. Chapter 16

“We’ve made it to Earth this time, at least.” Donna sighs, crossing her arms and tilting her head slightly. She is starting to seriously consider rewriting the navigational programming, or at the very least have a thorough look at every inch of the mischievous system. A TARDIS isn’t supposed to be this unruly about landing where the pilot asks it to.   
The Bio-ships are bred specifically to be subservient to the Time Lords, and while Donna has never been a fan of the methods some Time Lords used to keep their ships pliant, the lack of cooperation that Old Girl has been giving them is worrying. She really doesn’t want to be rough with Old Girl, but it is starting to feel like the ship is holding them hostage. TARDIS’ have been known to go mad, if only at the loss of their pilots. The thought that Old Girl is having mental health issues is not half terrifying.

The Doctor is standing half-way out of the door way, an utterly bewildered mien on his face. “Where are we?” he asks over his shoulder, apparently too lazy to check the console himself. He looks around like a big kid caught in a natural history museum, intrigued but cautious. 

Donna sighs and flicks on the console. The name of the location flickers on and Donna pauses in confusion. She wiggles the controls again, double checking the coordinates against a digital map just to be sure. “Huh, we’re in Leadworth again.” Donna answers distractedly, and starts up a full-range scan. This can’t be a coincidence. 

“Leadworth? Again?” the Doctor asks as he turns to look at her, holding on the edges of the door as he thinks that he’ll be sucked out if he doesn’t hold on. “Have we been to Leadworth before?” he asks with a frown. When Donna doesn’t answer, still caught up in running scans, he turns his look towards Terry and Jenny, who are both seated on the jump seat. “Well, have we?” he repeats at them.

“Not with me.” Jenny shrugs, looking about as bewildered as she ever has, then looks questioningly at her brother. Terry, who has been reading on his data-pad again, only notices that he’s been asked a question when the Doctor clears his throat loudly, prompting Jenny to elbow her brother in the side. 

“Huh? What, sorry. I wasn’t listening.” He says without looking up. He has an utterly innocent, and somewhat infuriatingly earnest, expression on his square face. Jenny snickers wickedly into her hands, her red pony tail bobbing. 

The Doctor rolls his eyes at them and turns to Donna. Donna has barely managed to look away a split second before he turns his eyes to her, and is trying to look busy.

“What say you, Mother-of-my-Children?” he asks, nearly stumbling over an antiquated Gallifreyan term that also translates to ‘spouse’ if you give it certain inflection. He flashes her what might be considered a charming smile, leaning slightly forward and waggling his eyebrows exaggeratedly.

Donna ignores the warm roll of affection that curls in her gut, doesn’t let herself wonder at the strange choice of descriptor and gives him a cursory glare. It isn’t a word that is all that well known, but Donna has always been fond of classical literature, and the exact definition is the main theme of one of her favourite romance novels. She’s been reading it in the library recently, trying to reconnect with The Tinker. He’s making fun of her, the dunce, she thinks uncharitably. He had been ever since she had needed to claim him as her husband to get him released. 

She turns her attention back to the scanners. “Yes, we have. Very briefly.” She replies only somewhat mockingly. “In fact, we’ve only just left a few minutes ago, according to Old Girl. I think she wants us to check on something.” Donna frowns, hands flying across the console and teasing answers out of the instruments there in. 

“Um, Excuse me?” a very young voice with a strong Scottish accent interrupts before Donna can say any more. A small girl with very red hair is standing just outside the doors, looking in with a suspicious sort of curiosity mixed with wonder. 

The Time Lords share a quick glace. Donna is mildly amused to see The Doctor throw a jealous glance at the young girls hair, then run a hand through his own absently. 

“Yes, Sweetheart?” she asks the girl after a moment of awkward silence. 

The girl looks at her, the skin around her blue eyes creased in concentration. “You’ve ruined Aunties garden shed.” She says firmly and frowns. Her small blue eyes keep flicking around between the assembled adults as if she is looking for something.  
“Are you my parents?” she asks, even as Donna is trying to think up an appropriate response to the ruined shed. 

Donna can see why the girl might think so, given the overabundance of gingers in the room. 

“Well, I don’t think we are, Sweetheart, but we can do a quick scan to check if you’d like?” she offers, already well aware that the girl is human, and so very unlikely to be a child of hers, even a future one. She thinks mildly to herself that there have been an awful lot of children popping up out of nowhere, and maybe that wasn’t the appropriate response, but she can’t think of a better one.

The Doctor is looking at her with a mixture of surprise and disbelief, but he gamely pulls out his sonic when she raises an eyebrow and tilts her head towards the girl. A look towards the seat shows Jenny looking at the girl with some curiosity, though Terry is back to his reading.

The little girls frown deepens somewhat when The Doctor takes a step closer and waves is Sonic at her, taking readings from her entire body. It takes a few moments longer than Donna thinks it should, and for a split second she thinks that the child might actually be one of theirs, until he shakes his head.

“Well, no, Dear Child, we aren’t,” he starts in a very gentle tone of voice as he crouches down to be on her level. “You do have a bit of alien DNA in you, but that is a few generations away, so probably your grandmother was an alien like us.” He explains. Donna notices that he seems to have adjusted his accent to match the child, probably in an attempt to put her more at ease.

“Alien? D’you mean Scottish?” she asks, scanning the assembled adults doubtfully.

Donna can’t help but smile at her.

“Nope, Short-fry,” Terry interrupts from behind his reading, “Aliens, from space.” He continues in a tone that puts Donna’s teeth on edge. It isn’t like him to react with this kind of cool hostility.

The little girl rolls her eyes and sighs expressively, not taking any of Terry’s tone to heart. “There’s no such thing.” She answers condescendingly, completely ignoring the adults now to talk to Terry. “My aunt says that it’s just something that the government made up to make us pay more taxes for stuff.” She continues stridently.   
Terry does look up from his reading at that, and Donna bites her lip to keep from laughing at the deeply offended look on her son’s face. She shares a look with The Doctor, who seems equally amused, but refrains from commenting.

“Made Up! To make you pay taxes?!” Terry sounds nearly strangled with offence at this point. His sits up straighter and places both of his hands on his knees, dropping the pad doing so, and glares at the child.  
At this point, Jenny seems to take offence herself, though not at the child’s comments. She only barely seems to remember to restrain herself from hitting his arm.

“Well, how is she supposed to know, she’s not very old yet is she?” She snipes at her brother. Terry looks at her with so much disbelief that she visibly steels herself.

Donna decides that this is enough, and she needs to intervene, but to her surprise The Doctor beats her to it. 

“So, what’s your name, little one, and why did you think we might be your parents?” he asks the girl, still gentle in tone, but respectful as well.

The little girl takes a moment to glare some more at Terry, then smiles at Jenny, before she turns to answer the question.  
“My name is Amelia Pond, and I thought you might be my parents’ because mine are missing and no one remembers what they look like anymore, or what their names are.”

Donna feels her heart clench at the thought, then part of her mind starts going over ways that it could be possible for someone to disappear like that. ‘Maybe an orphan,’ she thinks to herself with some pity, thinking that it can’t always be something extraordinary.

“Oh my,” The Doctor replies seriously, then shares a significant glance with Donna, “That does sound odd. Maybe we can help you find out about them, if you’d like us to, Amelia?” he says, still respectful of the young girls dignity. “How long have they been missing?” he asks her.

Amelia frowns, or perhaps it is frowns more intensely as she had been frowning all along, excepting that brief smile at Jenny. “I’m not sure, but I think a day.” She says, a slight bit of confusion clouding her face. “They went out to look for work yesterday, but then it was like they just disappeared, and even Auntie can’t really remember them anymore.” 

Donna steps over to the scanners and initiates a proper scan of the area, rather than the usual placement scan. The TARDIS’ mumble inaudibly, even as the scanner displays suddenly starts popping to life with all sorts of warnings and readings. There is an inordinate amount of scarring in the localised time-space, as if there had once been a large rend somewhere nearby.   
A deeper scan shows the rend-scar to be located in the second floor of the large house, sealed over badly, but strangely enough the scans also show a perfectly unharmed time-space. The two results overlap in a disturbing manner, just out of phase with reality.

Time-space could have been rended here, she realises grimly, and the possibility was apparently so strong that even as it didn’t happen, it still affected the world in some relatively small way. If you could call people disappearing from Time-space a small effect, which she isn’t entirely sure you can.  
The fact that their disappearance hasn’t caused their daughter to disappear as well is something that points to the fact that they aren’t completely gone. Well, that or young Amelia is a fixed point in time, but that would probably have protected her parents as well, as far as The Tinker’s opinion goes. Time does have this rather annoying tendency to try to stick to the easiest path of Cause and Effect. 

It isn’t until she turns to share her theory that she realises that she has been talking out loud the entire time. The Doctor, still crouching next to Amelia, is looking at her with wide eyes, nodding thoughtfully as he thinks it over. Amelia seems to be trying to look like she understands what was just said, but it doesn’t take a Time Lady to tell that she is confused.  
Terry has joined those two, leaning against a strut of corral, while Jenny is still sitting shyly on the jump seat, her hands curling anxiously on her lap.

“What does that mean, then?” Amelia asks seriously. 

The Doctor turns back to face her with a smile and claps his hands once as he heaves himself up onto his feet. “It means that we can probably find them and get them back, that’s what.” He says, and offers the girl a hand. “Want to come with?” he asks.

Donna wants to throw something at his head. What the heck is that idiot Time Lord thinking, inviting a child on an adventure, onto her TARDIS’, without so much as asking her opinion.

“Oi, now, wait a minute. This isn’t exactly going to be a walk in the park, you know? This could potentially be very dangerous.” She reminds him sternly.

The Doctor looks at her apologetically, but Amelia grasps his hand in the next second and smiles at her with the sort of defiance that Donna didn’t expect to see in someone not yet a teenager.  
“That’s fine, if I can get my parents back.” She says firmly, and takes that final step into the TARDIS’, the doors shutting behind her.


	17. Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welp, that's unfortunate.

This Amelia Pond isn't what Terry expected.

For one, she's small, if still recognisable. For another, she still speaks with a Scottish accent. The Amelia Pond he had met in the other world had assimilated completely and had spoken with the perfect elocution of a news-anchor off the BBC. She had been working for TORCHWOOD as a manager of projects. She had been hard, and cold, when he had interacted with her. They had developed a mutual distrust well before he had regenerated. 

Little Amelia, on the other hand, seems simply stubborn. If she is trying to hide the suspicious looks she keeps sending him as he leads her to the kitchen, she is failing miserably. Still, part of him can't help but be equally suspicious of her, and he doesn't so much as offer her a hand to lead her by.

Habits, once learnt, are hard to break. Maybe it's prior experience, or maybe it's the strange time-sense around her, but that doesn't matter much to Terry. 

"So, what's your name, then?" she asks him, breaking the slightly strained silence of the corridor.

Terry hadn't realised that he hasn't yet introduced himself. He looks at her with a frown that he can't suppress, and hesitates for a long moment.

"My name is Terrence Noble, Amelia Pond." He replies sternly as he shoulders open the door to the kitchen. "Terrence Noble," he repeats, for lack of anything else to say. "Now, what would you like to eat, some Floren Jelly on Rye, or perhaps some Duat?" 

The young girl is really a champ at this frowning business, he'll give her that. It doesn't take him long to feel bad for his tone under those judging blue eyes, though he keeps that to himself.

"I don't know what that is. Do you have cereal?" Little Amelia says, blue eyes flickering around as if she expects the walls to start reaching for her. Her body language is bizarrely confident, another thing that rubs Terry the wrong way.

They don't make it to the kitchen. The TARDIS' rocks and churns worryingly, alarms blaring and the walls flashing red.

Terry is thrown into the wall,though he finds himself unconsciously reaching out and pulling the child to him to keep her from getting hurt. Her eyes are wide and frightened, but she doesn't make a sound as they are shaken back against the support struts in the hallway. 

The walls flicker worryingly for a moment, turning an unfamiliar blue, then orange, doors phasing in and out at random until everything suddenly stabilises, as if nothing has happened. The only clue that something is wrong is the still foreign walls.

The door closest to them slams open, and a grown Amelia Pond rushes through it, followed closely by a gangly young man. They spot Terry and Amelia, and stop, staring in confusion.

"What the hell, Amy?" the young man asks, looking back and forth between the young Amelia and the adult version. "I thought you said you never travelled with The Doctor when you were little." He exclaims, sounding betrayed.

"Shut it, Rory, I swear I didn't." Grown-Amelia replies, staring at the pair of them with a disturbed expression on her face. 

Terry notices absently that this Amelia has also retained her accent, though most of his attention is focused on the broken bonds screaming at him from the back of his mind. A black hole of despair is trying to swallow him whole, the shock of 'alonealonealone' sending him reeling so far that he is hardly present in the moment. All he can do is clutch at Amelia and breathe.

A third figure follows them out of the door, awkwardly sidestepping around the two. "Oi, why are we loiteri..." he starts, but then notices Terry and Amelia by the wall.

"What?" the figure exclaims after a moment of stunned silence. 

Terry manages to focus enough to look up at the figure. The features are familiar, though older and brunette, but something is very off. This is not himself he is looking at. It feels like...

"Dad?" he manages, confused. The bonds in his mind are flailing wildly for contact, but he hadn't connected to The Doctor, and he doesn't know this face. It feels like The Doctor, but not his Doctor.

The strange version of The Doctor stares at him in stunned silence until the grown Amelia whips around and slaps his arm. "Why's mini-you calling you dad, and why's there a mini-me with him?"

The Doctor flails in a way that is so foreign that it almost sends Terry into a panic at the strangeness of it. "I don't know, how am I supposed to know?" he whines at Grown-Amelia, waving his arms about wildly as he gestures. 

"Did something weird happen when the Tardis shook and the alarms went off?" little-Amelia asks in the same stubborn tone she's been maintaining since Terry met this version.

The strange trio turn to look at her. "Alarms, what alarms?" the young man, Rory, asks in a tone that clearly conveys that they experienced no such thing. 

"There was a loud alarm, and the walls went red and blue, and the whole ship shook just a moment ago." The girl explains in her imperious tone that strangely makes Rory smile. Grown-Amelia is frowning at the girl, while The Doctor still seems completely confused. 

"Oh," The Doctor says after a moment where everyone, that isn't still panicking Terry, seems to be looking to him for answers. "Well, that's not good, not at all." He finally says, and pulls out a sonic screwdriver that is just as foreign as his face.

At this point, it seems like little-Amelia has realised that Terry isn't quite alright, and she twists in his grip to look at him. "Terry, you alright? What's wrong?" she asks, and for the first time her tone changes. She sounds genuinely concerned about him.

"I can't feel Mum and Jenny in my head anymore, and it hurts." He murmurs quietly enough that Grown-Amelia and Rory probably don't hear him, though The Doctor freezes solid at the explanation.

"Oh, that's bad then?" little-Amelia asks, and lays a comforting hand on his arm, gently twisting free of his grip and bending slightly to meet his eyes. Terry nods and bites back a small whimper, though he can feel his mind starting to build up shielding to keep the severed ends of his bonds away from his waking mind. Old Girl, or a version of her, is crooning gently to him, but that feels wrong too, twisted and wounded, like the song of a dying bird.

"Jenny, did you say?" The Doctor says. "Mum?" he asks, a frightening intensity in his voice that makes Terry sit up and meet this strange impostors eyes. "What's you name? Terry?"

Little-Amelia beats him to his answer. "His name is Terrence Noble, and I'm Amelia Pond. Jenny is his sister, and his mum's name is Donna." She lists off, standing almost in front of Terry, as if shielding him from the strangers.

As Donna's name passes Little-Amelia's lips, it seems like someone has cut this strange Doctor's strings. He falls to his knees with a whump, his face blank and uncomprehending. "Donna Noble?" he asks in a hollow voice as his two companions reach for him in fright.  
Terry nods.  
"Your mum is Donna Noble." He says, not quite a question. His voice is as wrong as Old Girl's now, and it hurts Terry to hear it. "But, Donna is human." The Doctor says, "If she remembers, she'll die. She'll die." He repeats, and wraps his arms around his knees, then sits frozen on the floor of the hallway. "She'll burn up, she'll die. Jenny died, Donna will die." 

Terry has almost found his equilibrium again, even as this Doctor is falling apart. His shields are thicker than he's ever needed them to be before, and even Old Girl is completely muted. Grown-Amelia is glaring hatefully at him in a way that is so familiar that he feels a moment of vertigo, while Rory is trying to take The Doctor's pulse.

Little-Amelia beats him to his words again. "His mum isn't human, she said she was an alien herself." She exclaims. Terry is a bit amused to realise that she is glaring just as hatefully back at Grown-Amelia.

The Doctor is completely into his own mind now, and doesn't respond. Rory seems to give up getting his pulse and stands up with a baffled shake of his head. Terry follows suit, and takes a moment to straighten out his clothes before turning to face the companions.

As soon as he's found his feet and is facing them, Grown-Amelia is in his face.

"What did you say to him? Who is Donna, and what the hell is going on?" she hisses angrily at him, poking at his chest. He is a bit surprised to realise that she is a bit taller than he is.

"Donna is my mum, his wife. I don't know why he thinks she'll burn, or why he thinks she's human. I mean, when they met, they thought she was human, but she isn't actually. I don't know what he's on about this burning thing." He tries to explain. 

"Wait, he's married to someone named Donna? What about River Song?" Rory asks, wide eyed and shuffling on his feet.

Terry stares at him, completely baffled. "River Song, the archaeologist?" he asks, just to be certain. "The one who died the first time they met, in the Library?" he clarifies. 

The two stare at him in shock. "She died?" Grown-Amelia asks incredulously.

Terry nods uncertainly, not really remembering the episode except in general. "About a week or two before I was born, as far as I know." He explains. The Doctor is still unresponsive on the floor when he glances to check. 

"But I met her last week!" Grown-Amelia exclaims, and stomps her foot as if marking her point. 

Rory shuffles on his feet some more before speaking, stuffing his hands in his pockets and looking uncomfortable with the subject. He is taking things remarkably well, as far as Terry is concerned. "Well, this is a time machine, Amy, I mean we did also go to 14th century Venice last week as well." 

Grown-Amelia, Amy, glares at Rory at the comment. "That isn't the point, Rory! River said..." Amy pauses, an uncertain look on her face, and doesn't continue.

"Wait, Rory? are you Rory Williams, from my class at school?" Amelia asks the young man with a frown. Terry can feel an enormous head-ache building, throbbing against his brow-bone, and has a suspicion that it is Old Girl trying to break through his shields.

Amy turns to Amelia, abandoning her previous statement. "And what are you doing in the Tardis, anyway?" she demands. 

Amelia turns her frown on her grown counterpart. "I'm looking for mum and dad, obviously. Why does the Doctor look like that?" she replies imperiously.

"What else is he supposed to look like?" Amy responds, crossing her arms across her chest and tilting her chin up defensively. Terry rubs at the bridge of his nose and has a look at this Rory person. He's never met a Rory before in either of his previously visited realities. 

The Amelias' glare at each other, though it looks less and less like anger and more like confusion and fear. Terry wishes his mother was here to deal with this rather than him.  
"He probably regenerated at some point, Amelia...s. It's when we're close to death, we can force our bodies to heal, but it changes what we look like." Terry tells them, and tries to calm Amelia down with a hand on her shoulder. 

Amelia turns to look at him with a good deal of fear, which makes Terry feel a bit better about his own sick feeling. "D'you mean he's almost died? Has something happened to Donna and Jenny then?" 

Terry is pretty sure he has a good grip on what's happened now how all of this goes together, and tries to explain it to the others. "I don't think this is our time-line, Amelia."

>>>


	18. Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, I'm just having trouble getting back into this.

The TARDIS' is shaking like a newly-struck piñata. Donna is not amused as she struggles out of her shower and throws on a terrycloth robe. She's only been out of the control room for ten minutes, and given that she had set them smoothly into the vortex to idle before she had gone off, her mood is not improved by the sudden occurrence.  
The alarms are blaring wildly when she strives back to the console to run the diagnostics to find out what is going on, the walls flashing reds and blues. The Doctor hurries in close on her heels, followed by Jenny, who looks more confused than worried.

"What's going on, I've never seen these alarm colours before?" The Doctor asks, more curious than alarmed. Donna has a moment to feel exasperated at his lack of self-preservation instinct before a loud snap echoes through her head. 

For a moment she doesn't realize what has happened, the warm pain of it making her think she's had an aneurysm, before The Tinker takes over and blocks off the bonding center of her mind. She only absently sees Jenny keel over in a dead faint and The Doctor rushing to her side.

"Jenny! Jenny, what's wrong? Jenny!" The Doctor cradles their daughter to his chest as he tries to get a response from her. It takes him moments, perhaps remembering a similar situation The Tinker assumes, before he reaches in and grabs his screwdriver. The Tinker leans across the console and breathes deeply, running through a familiar if hated process.

"Donna, the bonding center of her brain is showing a lot of trauma that she doesn't know how to deal with, we need to..." The Doctor trails off as he looks up at her from the floor. "Donna?"

The Tinker trills a negation, her voice steady even as tears leak from her eyes. "Scan for Terrensé," she says in gallifreyan, the English name twisting oddly in their native tongue, her eyes fixed stiffly in the distance, somewhere over his left shoulder.

The Doctor gently lowers Jenny to rest on the floor, then flicks his screwdriver around, fiddling with the settings a few times, before lowering it to his lap. "He's not showing up on my scans. Do- Tinker, what's happening?" 

The Tinker reaches up and wipes the tears off her face, then takes a deep breath and collects herself. A deft twist to the bonding center of her mind, too familiar by far, sets the ripped strands away and separate from the rest of her mind, and she opens her mind to Jenny.

"We need to bring Ginnifer to the med-bay, you need to help her with the remains of her bond with Terrensé." She answers as she shields her mind from the panic and grief that explodes from The Doctor at her words

The Tinker isn't surprised by the calm and resigned way The Doctor nods his head and gathers their daughter in his arms. She takes a deep breath and follows after him. The corridors are calm and back to their normal colours, the air silent. 

Both TARDIS' are nearly silent, a low wave of confusion and pain rolling inaudibly across the walls. The door to the med-bay opens in front of them, and a light above a bed flicks on. The Doctor carefully places the young red-head on it and brings her a blanket.

"I'm going to have to go in deep for this, Tinker, I may not be able to avoid her bond with you while I'm in there, for which I apologize." The Doctor says, not looking at The Tinker as he fetches a chair to sit by their daughter. 

The Tinker nods and stands watch until it is clear that The Doctor is fully immersed. Once she is sure that they do not require her help, she turns and starts her search. Somewhere on this ship, her son lies.

It doesn't occur to her until she has been through both of her children's bedrooms, the kitchen, and is on her way to the library, that Terry hadn't been alone when the emergency had occurred. The young girl had been with him, Amelia. She brings out her sonic and starts the life-signs detector, disheartened to realize that the girls life-signs aren't showing up either, the only signs other than herself and the ships being The Doctor and Jenny in the infirmary. 

The Tinker frowns as a thought flickers through her numbness. It isn't just the life-signs that aren't showing up. The biological remains should be showing up if nothing else. It doesn't take more than a few moments for her to recalibrate the sonic to the most sensitive bio-scanner that she has ever made. There are trails of biological material all over the corridors, going back to the first Time Lord to have walked through, and it takes even more tinkering to isolate the trails that she needs. Human DNA vastly outnumbers the Time Lord DNA, so she focuses on the most recent trails, using her own DNA to find traces of Terry. 

The corridors of the TARDIS can seem unending to the uninitiated, but to The Tinker, there is a simple logic to the layout. Old Girl and BABY help her in their own ways, making sure she covers the entire area that the two youngsters passed through until she finds the place where the trail is freshest. It is an otherwise unremarkable slice of corridor not more than a few steps from the kitchens, the trail twisting until it meets the wall. 

There is a huge temporal-spatial rift, identical to the one that had/hadn't existed in Leadworth. The unreality of the rift makes it easy to completely miss where the fabric of space and time is bunched up and twisted, without actually being bunched up and twisted. Now that she is aware of it, it makes her terribly nauseous, and she has to take a moment to breathe through her nose to push down the urge to vomit. 

Unfortunately nothing at all about the rift tells her whether it has opened into another plane, reality, or time-line, or even if it has opened at all. There is no way for her to know if this is what took the missing children, or if the children had been disintegrated by a stray strand of unreality. 

A twinge at the edge of her mind startles her from her deep concentration. The Tinker takes a deep breath of relief when the gentle feeling that denotes Jenny's place in her mind resurfaces. There is so much fear and confusion in her daughter's mind, but it is equally full of gratitude for her father, who The Tinker feels mentally cocooning their traumatized daughter. 

The Doctor is keeping his own pain completely under control, away from Jenny and probably meaning to keep it away from her as well. He still doesn't seem to realize their connection is deeper than the simple bond of friendship that they had shared since she had stepped in front of him wearing a wedding dress. The Tinker can't tolerate that and latches on to The Doctor, unable to carry the loss alone when there is someone who can help her carry that burden. 

She forces open the connection, flowing through the startled gap that appears when The Doctor realizes what she's doing. She pauses briefly at the root of the bond that they share, suddenly unsure if she wants to burden her friend like this, but The Doctor reaches out and pulls her in as soon as he senses her. The bond solidifies, but doesn't deepen as it would had they started it with the intent to marry. 

The rush of gratitude from The Doctor as they share their pain and worry is almost enough to unseat The Tinker, but she can`t, not when her son needs her to be a proper Time Lord rather than just a temp from Chiswick. She can't be Donna right now.

The Tinker makes her way back to the console room, her sonic loaded up with readings that she needs the TARDIS' cores to properly analyze. The Doctor meets her there, places a hand on her shoulder as he passes by her, then goes to sit on the jump-seat. 

"Have you found anything, Tinker?" he asks her in a thick voice that he tries to clear by coughing into his hand. "What happened?"

The Tinker looks up from setting the analysis and meets his eyes. He looks hopeful, but she can see that dark shadow lurking that expects bad news. 

"I'm not sure what I've found, except that the not-rift from Leadworth seems to have latched on and is hovering near the kitchens. I think both Terrensé and Amelía have been swallowed by the rift, but I don't know if they have been removed to somewhere else or if they have been erased from reality." The Tinker explained, still not capable of speaking anything but her native tongue. 

"Possibly it is connected to what happened to Amelía's parents, but I have never dealt with this kind of thing before, so I'm not sure." The Tinker explains, turning back to the read outs and trying to think of what to do with the information that the TARDIS' cores are spitting out. 

The Doctor sighs roughly and rests his face in his hands for a moment before pulling himself to his feet and walks over to where The Tinker is working. He hugs her from behind, snaking his arms around her abdomen and resting his forehead on her shoulder. The intimacy of the embrace freezes Tinker solid for a moment, but she powers through. She can't let herself be distracted.

After a moment The Doctor tightens the hug. "We'll get them back, Donna, I promise." He murmurs into her shoulder before disengaging. He clears his throat again in an awkward cough, and gently brushes her shoulder as he moves to help her at the console. The Tinker pretends not to notice the slight sniffling and the way he rubs at his nose. 

"Of course we will, Spaceman." Donna replies, managing a small smile at her friend from under her fringe, before sinking back under The Tinker. The broken bond throbs behind her shields in time with her heart beats.

**

Terry is not at all impressed by this version of The Doctor. He knows that he at times seems very immature, but in his own defense, he isn't a fully grown Time Lord. He's barely adolescent, if you were to judge purely biologically, and temporally he is only two years old. 

This Doctor has no such excuse, and it grates on Terry to see someone who is essentially his father acting like a complete fool. The fact that he is apparently trying to take them to Rio Di Janeiro for a part at Amy's request, instead of working on the fact that he and Amelia need to go back to their homes, really pisses him off. 

As such he is remarkably unsympathetic, and unsurprised, when they arrive in a place that is absolutely not Rio Di Janeiro. He and Amelia, who is sticking to his side like glue, hang back when the strange trio rush ahead out the door. A few moments later, when they are considering actually having a look at where ever they are, Rory walks back through the door.

"What, not exciting enough out there?" Amelia asks him with some resentment. Terry hides a smile by swinging about and looking at the read outs that he can only just make sense of.

Rory pauses, perhaps a bit taken aback, but still smiles at the young girl and shows her a red velvet box. "Nah, I'm just putting this away so Amy doesn't loose it." He explains.

Terry raises an eyebrow in question and walks over to have a look at whatever it is Rory is putting away. "What's that, then?" he asks mildly.

Suddenly it is as if Rory realizes something, and looks between Terry and Amelia hesitantly before stuffing the box back into his pocket. "No-Nothing, nothing at all."

"Aw, don't be like that, Rory." Terry says teasingly, and in a quick move filches the box from the hesitant young man. Rory looks extremely uncomfortable, but for some reason doesn't try to take it back from him. 

Terry shares an amused smile with Amelia, and flourishes the box towards the young red head. "Will you do the honours, my lady?" he asks, and returns the smile that the young girl bestows on him.

"Is this an engagement ring?" Amelia exclaims in disbelief as she stares at the ring in the box.

>>>


	19. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, for once people actually replied here before I got any reviews on FF.net.

The Tinker leans over the console for a deep breath. It has been days since the incident that stole the two children from the TARDIS’ and she hasn’t had a wink of sleep since. The throbbing in her mind has only gotten worse, but she isn’t ready to rest, not yet. Her eyes feel like she has particles of sand stuck under her lids and she honestly doesn’t remember when the last time she had any sleep was. Time Lords don’t need as much sleep as humans, but even they need to rest.

The Doctor is in the infirmary again, checking up on Jenny. She hasn’t woken up since the incident, and only her gentle presence in their minds keeps The Tinker from worrying herself sick over her remaining child. Another deep breath, and another, because she just realises that she has been thinking as if Terry really is gone. She can’t think like that, not when there is still hope. Another deep breath, then another.

“Tinker?” The Doctor asks from the door, startling Tinker out of the slight doze she has fallen into. She wipes angrily at her eyes as she straightens up, rolling her shoulders in an attempt to force the tiredness from her aching muscles.

The Doctor walks up and places a comforting hand on her shoulder that quickly turns supportive as she almost tips over. “Tinker, this can’t go on. I want to find the children as much as you do, but working yourself to death isn’t going to help Terry.” He pauses and pulls her back from the console until she is resting against his chest. The warmth of his body is almost enough to send her off to sleep.

“Like we agreed; you do engineering, but let me be the Doctor on board. You need to listen to your Doctor now, and go get some rest. I’ll keep running the scans, we wont stop looking, I promise.” He tells her firmly while cradling her treacherous body as it starts to fade into sleep. She hasn’t the energy to even protest, and before more than a few moments have passed, she is asleep in his arms.

***

Amelia keeps sending distrustful and mildly disgusted looks at Rory as they exit the Tardis, which Terry finds absolutely hilarious. Rory doesn’t seem to see the humour of the situation, and instead looks supremely uncomfortable. He looks that way a lot, now that Terry thinks about it, nearly always when Amy and the Doctor are interacting, or when The Doctor turns his attention to Rory. Terry has no idea why the young man is travelling with them if he finds it so objectionable, but he figures that it must be something to do with being engaged to Amy.

He looks back for a quick look at Amelia, who is indeed still glaring at the poor young man, and can’t help but grin. 

“Oh, you’d be from the police, then?” a woman’s voice breaks through the relative silence and startles Terry into a twirl. A woman and a young boy are standing just a few feet away from them, looking at Terry and Rory expectantly, then seems to catch sight of Amelia. “Oh, is this your sister? Is it really appropriate to bring your sister to a crime scene?” she asks disapprovingly.

Terry glances quickly at Rory and Amelia, but Rory seems frozen in surprise while Amelia is hiding behind Terry’s legs and frowning. Again. 

“Um, well, I’m watching her for our parents, might as well take her to work.” He improvises with as much confidence as he can pull up, a bit surprised that the woman seems to assume that he is an adult. He doesn’t think he looks that old anymore, not since he regenerated anyway. “Now, what’s this about a crime scene?” he asks to get the topic changed and to find out why she would even make such assumptions.

The kid moves closer, removing a pair of over-sized head-phones and looking at them closely, then looking back at the Tardis. 

Oh, right, Terry thinks to himself, a *Police* call box. Though, honestly that didn’t explain anything, that wasn’t what police call boxes were used for.

“Vintage, nice,” the boy starts with an approving nod, “a mobile crime lab, is it?” he asks, glancing between Terry and Rory. 

Rory seems to snap out of his surprise at this. “Something like that, yeah,” he replies, though Terry is not impressed with his lack of confident delivery. Has the man never had to lie convincingly before, he thinks to himself uncharitably. 

“Right,” the woman interrupts before either can say anything else, “the crime scene is this way.” She gestures and starts to stride off towards the back part of the graveyard they appear to have landed in. Terry shares a baffled glance with Amelia, then shrugs and starts to follow after. Rory seems to hesitate, but hurries to catch up when he realises that they aren’t going to wait for him.

The crime scene is an open grave. It’s empty, which would be the crime, according to the woman. She doesn’t pause long after explaining what is up, before she strides off, leaving her son with the group. Before Terry can as much as pull out his sonic to scan the grave, Rory jumps in. He lands with a slight thump and starts to examine the walls as if they will reveal some secret if he just stares at them long enough. 

“I think the grave ate him.” The boy says. Actually he says more than that, but that is what Terry hears, and even as Rory straightens up and gives the boy an exasperated look, he agrees.

“I think you’re right, kid. It definitely looks like the grave ate the body, the coffin as well.” He says with a nod. HE then pulls out the basic screwdriver that his mum had given him after the riot and starts scanning the walls and dirt, deciding to ignore the way both Rory and Amelia are looking at him as if he’s lost his marbles. He’s never been much for marbles, but that’s neither here nor there.

“It looks like the ground round here has been bio-engineered to move any remains of biological entities larger than lets say a mole, down wards, though why that is is anyones guess.” He explains, then stuffs his screwdriver back into his pockets. The impressed look from the boy is most appreciated, and even Amelia looks approving. Rory, on the other hand, simply looks baffled. 

“Down wards? What do you mean, the body’s just been buried deeper?” he asks with a disturbed look down to his feet, then swiftly jumps out of the grave as if he expects the body to burst through the ground and grab at his ankles. 

“Well, buried deeper, or just pulled down and moved out of the way for whatever is burrowing up from way down there.” Terry explains with a shrug and a head tilt towards the open grave. This doesn’t seem to reassure anyone but himself. 

“What would that be, then?” Amelia asks and crossed her arms over her chest with a frown. Terry is a bit disheartened to realise that she is back to frowning at him as often as she frowns at Rory. It had been nice while it lasted, and if he’s latched onto her as the only familiar thing in this time-line, he doesn’t think anyone can blame him.

Terry frowns back at her, then jumps into the grave with a flourish that he is sure the twisted version of the Doctor wouldn’t be able to pull off, and whips his sonic back out. “Well, there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?” he asks and sets his sonic to interface with the bio-engineered soil. He hadn’t quite expected the dirt to immediately fall away from under him. 

“Hey, wait for me!” he hears Amelia call from above him as he starts sliding swiftly down a remarkably smooth tube of dirt, before the light above him is blocked out. 

“Oi, no you don’t not without me!” Rory calls and follows after, Terry assumes.

“Me too!” The boy, what was his name again? Elliot?, yells and jumps in with a delighted whoop.

***

Donna wakes up in her bedroom, and for a moment of disorientation, she doesn’t remember how she got there or what has been going on. She lays there on her soft bed in a cocoon of warmth until the throbbing of her head reminds her. It’s almost worse than when it happened, the instinctive knowledge that she has lost a child reasserting itself with every beat of her hearts until all she can hear is thump-thump-thump-thump. Her hands find her eyes with no prompting from her, and the first sobs break through her resolve with the force of a calving glacier. 

It takes a great deal for a Time Lord to lose track of time. Donna has no idea how long she sobs, except that her throat is raw and her voice hoarse by the time she realises that she isn’t alone. Jenny has crawled up and is resting her head on Donna’s lap, while The Doctor has curled himself around her shoulders. They are both crying, perhaps more quietly than Donna had been but no less brokenhearted. 

“We’ll find him, I promise, I promise,” The Doctor is repeating into her hair, his voice thick and full of tears, and Donna can’t stop the swell of pure love and gratitude that rises in her. She isn’t alone with the loss this time, and neither is The Doctor. They can handle this. She reaches down and brings Jenny up into a tight hug, and shoves herself closer to The Doctor who responds by encircling them both.

“I know we will, I know.” She replies firmly, and sniffles to clear the snot from her nose. “Of course we will.”

They stay that way for a while, until the tears have dried up and the sobs are no longer trying to escape any of them, and then Donna rolls them all out of the bed. She helps Jenny to her feet, grateful that their little girl is back with them, and straightens her clothes as the Doctor picks himself up off the floor.

“Right, I think we all needed that.” The Doctor says as he uses one of the many handkerchiefs he hides in his pockets to clean up his face. 

Donna nods and swipes at her nose with the back of her hand, then accepts the kerchief that The Doctor hands her. “Right, we probably did, but what we need now is something to eat, I think.” She replies and turns back to Jenny to wipe the tears from her face with the soft cloth. Jenny smiles but doesn’t say anything, just grabs on to Donna’s arm as if she is afraid that she’ll disappear if Jenny doesn’t hold on tight enough.

“Right you are, Tinker,” The Doctor replies, and for some reason, Donna doesn’t feel the need to correct him. He isn’t wrong, after all. She smiles somewhat tearfully and gestures for him to lead on.

“Right, well, I think it’s best if we use BABY’s kitchen until we’ve figured out about that -not-rift, don’t you agree.” The Doctor states and leads them down to the console room and through the door into the parts of the TARDIS’ that are purely BABY. 

He hesitates at the open corridors that lead out, clearly waiting for Donna to direct him. It takes Donna just a few seconds to find out where BABY has recreated the mess hall. It isn’t as homey as Old Girl’s kitchens, sleek and modern looking in the style that Tinker had loved best back when she had designed BABY, and there is an odd sort of nervousness in her when she leads her family into the mess. 

There are no appliances, only a proper replicator and some cupboards against one wall, all in sleek copper counters and moss coloured panelling. She brings out some cups and plates, and asks BABY to put some comfort food together, and make up a pot of tea, which materialises silently in the slot of the fridge-sized replicator. 

Turning back, she gestures for The Doctor and Jenny to grab what they want, and goes to sit at her usual table. There are three, rounded and buffed copper with curved benches along the sides, a relic from the time when a full crew had used this room, and The Tinker has never had the heart to redesign it. Maybe now that she has someone new to share it with.


	20. 19

Silurians, of course it is Silurians, Terry thinks to himself as he tilts back past the corner he peeked around. He may not remember much, but one look at the humanoid reptilians brings out at least a general sense of awareness. It isn't a detailed knowledge, but he has a pretty good idea about what's going on.

"Well?" Amelia whispers from right behind him. She clutches at his coattails, not too sky to shoulder past Elliot to get to his side. Rory stands back from them a bit. Elliot scans their surroundings with great enthusiasm, then leans close to Amelia to try to look around them both. 

"Ah, well, it looks like we've stumbled on a Silurian outpost, though why they are tunneling upwards is a bit of a mystery." Terry answers with a worried frown as he peeks around the corner again. A troop of Silurian guards march past the archway further down the corridor, dressed in red-brown armor and very clearly armed. 

"Silurians? Are they aliens too?" Amelia asks suspiciously while Elliot practically vibrates with excitement. "Aliens? Aliens are real?" he asks in a strained voice. 

"Wait, what are aliens doing underground?" Rory adds.

Terry sighs with some exasperation and tries not to roll his eyes. Humans have some strange ideas and do seem to love to jump to conclusions. 

"No, they aren't aliens, Aliens are real yes, and I'm down here to check the situation out, in order." He replies in a loud whisper. "Silurians evolved on earth before humans did, though I don't really remember why they went underground, something about the Moon perhaps?" he ends on a thoughtful murmur, then presses himself and the children back in the shadows as another patrol marched past. 

"Indeed, the Moon was involved." A voice replies from somewhere behind Rory.

The group freezes for about half a second. Terry slowly turns around to face the source of the voice to find Rory held against the chest of a Silurian in a lab coat, one reptilian hand holds his mouth shut and another holds some kind of weapon against his head. Strangely enough, Rory looks apologetic, as if he considers the situation his own fault.

"You will come with me right now," the Silurian says calmly, though there is some tense set to her shoulders. 

Terry gently nudges the children behind him, then raises his hands in surrender.

"Alright, though I'd just like too point out that these two smaller ones are children and no threat to anyone." He explains, and pointedly ignores the insulted huff that emanates from both children. "They'll stay behind me, and be absolutely no trouble." He continues, more towards the children than the Silurian. 

The Silurian looks doubtfully at the children, but eventually nods. "They had better not be, I have no issues with terminating them should they prove troublesome."

Terry feels the children stiffen behind him as the seriousness of the situation becomes apparent even to them. "We'll be good." Amelia says seriously. Elliot nods along.

The laboratory that the Silurian takes them to is rather horrifying. It is clearly medical in some way, though the focus almost seems to be on torture if Terry were to judge by he tables with straps and run-off pits. The holding cells along one side of the room are just as worrying. The fact that they are empty could be a good sign, or a terrible one.

The Silurian Scientist herds the group towards the cells, then opens two with her elbow. "The children go in the one on the right." She demands. The kids look to Terry, who can only nod at them. Once the children are closed in, the Silurian throws Rory into the other cell and points her weapon at Terry. 

"Get in." 

Terry complies. He backs slowly into the cell, with his hands in the air to clearly show that he is unarmed. The Silurian slams a hand onto the door controls, and the doors shut with a hiss. Terry leans against the door, looking out the generous view window that takes up most of the top half of the door. Rory on the other hand seems utterly defeated, and goes to sit on the small cot with his head in his hands.

She nods to herself once she is sure they have been secured, then places the weapon on the table in the center of the room. She picks up what looks like a piece of flimsy in the shape of a clipboard, and pulls the pen from the holder at the top. 

"What are you doing here?" She asks them, much calmer than she had been, and quite ready to take notes it seems like.

Terry sees no reason to lie to her.

"Well, we were investigating the disappearance of a corpse in the graveyard above," he starts, but it interrupted.

"Graveyard?" The Silurian asks as she writes down his answer.

"Yeah, it is an area of land where the dead are buried in wooden boxes and memorials over them are raised." He explains gamely. The Silurian raises her brow-ridge slightly, but doesn't look up from her notes. 

"Is that the surface-dweller fashion then, to store your dead in boxes in the ground?" she asks, and suddenly Terry realizes that this is a proper scientist that they are faced with. She actually wants to know. 

"Sometimes," he starts, but is interrupted by Elliot. 

"We're called 'Human' or 'Humans' if theres more than one," He tells her, somewhat distracted by the surroundings, but apparently still paying attention. "And sometimes we burn our dead and bury the ashes instead." 

"Humans," The Silurian agrees and notes down. "Is there any significance to whether you burn the dead or not?" she asks Elliot with an appreciative smile. "Are warriors buried whole or burnt?"

Terry is a bit put out that Elliot seems to have established a rapport with the Silurian before he can find anything out, but decides to go with it.

Elliot shrugs and leans on his forearms against the view window. "I think that depends on what the soldier wanted, we call our warriors soldiers." He replies. "My name is Elliot, by the way. Elliot Mack, it's nice to meet you." He says the last bit by rote, probably without much thought.

The Silurian briefly looks up from her notes to reply. "My name is Doctor Malohkeh," she pauses, bemused, "I suppose it is nice to meet you as well, Elliot." She says with a reptilian smile. 

"What would the default choice be if many warriors are killed in battle," she continues after a moment. 

"Well, I think they would probably want to be buried rather than burned if they don't have a choice." Elliot answers thoughtfully with all the confidence of a child. 

Doctor Malohkeh nods. "Good, I shall pass that on to the Warrior caste, so we do not dishonor our fallen adversaries." She says almost absently, "I will also insure that those that we have already disrupted are properly replaced once the situation allows" she says as if that should be a great comfort.

Terry is chilled to the bone by the matter of fact manner of speech. "What situation?" he asks, perhaps more rudely than he intends.

"The imminent invasion that we have detected, of course. We will repel the invaders and defeat them on the surface, of that there is little doubt." Doctor Malohkeh explains firmly.  
#

The Tinker, Donna, is grateful that she has The Doctor as a companion, because she is absolutely certain that she would not have been able to isolate the strange trail of particles that emanate from the not-rift on her own. Nothing in her career has prepared her for this kind of impossible, but that isn't true for The Doctor. 

Even as is, there is no real way to follow the trail that she can make sense of. It is only a possible reality, one that they have already passed by in such a way that even an alternate time line should be completely inaccessible. It is impossible, but then so is the not-rift. 

"Can you hand me the wrench-thing, Jenny?" The Doctor calls from under the console as Donna tries to work on the in-built sensor array, trying to tweak it enough to at least detect the particles on a wide beam scan. 

They prove illusive in the worst possible way, and she can't help but contemplate a refit of the entire sensor bank. The needed time that such an operation would take makes her antsy. The need to find Terry as quickly as possible is persistent and ever-present. Even a short break makes her almost nauseous with pure worry. He had regenerated last time they had been separated like this, and she can't bear the thought that he might be in such danger again, certainly not so soon. 

She reaches down and implements her latest attempt, a work of beauty and mind-bending ingenuity that no one but The Tinker would ever create. The sensors spring to life in a whirl of intricate twining lines of data flowing forth in three dimensions on the display. They sweep out across the Time Vortex in every direction possible, and some frankly not, but none of the data that she hopes for appears. "Oh bollocks!"

"Donna?" The Doctor exclaims as he pops out from under the console to stare at her in surprise.

"Who the bleedin' hell else are you expecting?" Donna replies with a frustrated huff, eyes still fixed on the read out. She slams the controls of the sensor array, shutting them off and sending them back into development mode with an angry twitch of a few switches. 

"Um, The Tinker?" he sounds a bit bewildered and unsure of his answer.

Donna turns a glare down at the silly twit. "Weren't you the same Doctor who told me that The Tinker and Donna are the same person?" she sneers irritably down at him, then runs another hand through her thoroughly messy hair. 

"Well, yes, you are, but you´ve been... more Tinker lately." He has that expression on his face that he always wears when he expects her to punch his shoulder, bushy eyebrows raised high and lips pursed childishly. 

"Not that it matters!" he hurries to exclaim, then pulls himself back under the console and into safety. Jenny looks uncertainly between the two of them, still remarkably silent, then goes and brings back one of the many tool boxes that litter the console room, and sets it down by her fathers feet.

Donna is a bit surprised to realise the extent of the mess in the room. It looks like they've bought out a couple of hardware stores, though most of the tools are from her maintenance bay. You would probably also have to go to several dozens of planets and time periods to get them all, and all are in splendid condition. 

She grabs a tool box and starts to rifle through it thoughtlessly, sure she will know what it is when she finds it. 

The phone on the console springs to life with a shrill tone.

The Doctor startles, then swears under the console, so Donna sets aside her tools and hurries to answer.

"Donna Noble speaking, may I ask who is calling?" she says in a monotone, mind still occupied.

"Oh, sorry I must have a wrong number." A familiar voice says. It takes Donna a moment to recognize it.

"Martha Jones, is that you?" she asks, surprised and concerned.

There is a lengthy pause on the other end of the line. "I'm sorry, who did you say this is?" 

"Donna Noble, I travel with The Doctor, remember?" she prompts wearily. 

"You've met me before, then? I'm sorry, I don't think I've met you yet." Martha sounds both concerned and deeply curious. Donna can't help but give a small smile, imagining the young doctor's curious spirit. 

"I have, yes, though I suppose I shouldn't tell you about it if you haven't met me." She replies, partially glad of the distraction, partially annoyed.

The Doctor is peeking out from under the console now. He looks perplexed and a bit concerned.

"Right, you wanted to talk to The Doctor, I take it?" Donna asks, and raises an eyebrow in question to The Doctor, who wiggles out and wipes his hands on his trousers before reaching for the phone. Donna hands it to him with a nod and goes back to her tool box.

"We're actually working on an emergency right now, Martha, I'm not sure we can really spare the time." Donna hears The Doctor say as she contemplates the various doohickeys.

"Wait, you need help when exactly? What are you looking into?" The Doctor asks, this time with a note of confused alarm. Donna meets his eyes. His eyebrows are drawn up in a way that always spells trouble, and he is running an agitated hand through his hair.

He seems to waffle a bit, then looks away from Donna. "Alright, Martha, we'll be there shortly." 

Donna presses her lips together in pure ire, but doesn't say anything. She is a bit afraid that if she opens her mouth right now she might explode. Instead she pulls sharply at the mental link they share to force him to meet her eyes again. 

He hangs up the phone and turns to look at her, a strange heavy look on his face.

"Donna, Martha is currently investigating the Atmos systems and needs our help."

Her anger dissipates into confusion, then concern. "Atmos? But we've already done that. She called us ages ago, it can't happen again. That would cause a paradox." 

>>>

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out the prequel 'Recurrence'!


	21. 20

The TARDIS' whir and groan as Donna lands them in the warehouse that houses ATMOS industries. The place is teeming with UNIT soldiers, as it had been the first time they had arrived. Donna deliberately chose an out of the way place to land, worried that they might run into themselves and wary of creating a paradox.

"Right, call Martha." 

The Doctor looks up from his side of the console at her words with a raised eyebrow. 

"What? Why" he asks, but Donna notes with a smile that he reaches for the mobile before she can answer. There is some wonder in the fact that he trusts her enough to follow her instructions. 

"Well, it would be nice to know if we're here already, wouldn't it Spaceman?" she asks him with a crocked grin, trying not to feel to nervous. Too many things have gone wrong recently. If only this is a short stop, then maybe she can get back to her work with the sensors before the day is out.

The Doctor nods and dials without comment.

"Yes, hello," he pauses, "Martha? This might sound strange, but are we already there?" he asks, rolling his former companions name in what Donna assumes is an attempt to sound casual that he completely fails at. 

"Oh, we are?" he asks and meets Donna's eyes with a raised brow, scratching at his stubble with his other hand. A nervous twitch that has been absent for a while.

"No, no, nothings wrong, precisely," he tries, weaving his head from side to side as if the gesture will somehow comfort Martha, who can't even see him. 

"No! No, don't tell other me that we're," The Doctor shrugs at Donna, apparently struggling for words that are simple in Gallifreyan, but hard in English, "also here. It's just something with the time-streams, actually could you meet us when Other-us have left?" he offers, his over exited hand going to his hair. 

All his scratching makes him look like he's got lice, Donna thinks to herself with a fond little grin as she jiggles a switch absently, already readjusting something with half a thought. 

"Yeah, that would be great, we'll land just outside the warehouse once the hubbub is over. Ta!" He explains with his usual good humor that can cover over anything at all. It is dishonest in a way that Donna hasn't seen from him for a good while, and it tightens something in her to see it now. 

Well, this doesn't have to take long, Donna thinks to herself as The Doctor ends the call and replaces the mobile in its little stand on the console. 

"It's a good thing I've you to tell me these things," The Doctor jokes with one of his odd smiles, "or we would have run straight into a paradox." 

Donna isn't sure what to make of his tone, if he is as tense about this situation as she is, or if he finds it exiting rather than worrying. He would, probably, she thinks as she starts up the TARDIS' engines again and resets the coordinates for some hours forward. 

Jenny joins them shortly after Donna has them back into the vortex. The younger redhead wanders in and rubs at her eyes, her hair gathered in a messy pony tail, several wisps of red pulled free of their band. It isn't just her hair that looks messy. Her blue and grey striped sweater is covered in what looks like bread crumbs, while there are several strange stains on her khaki trousers.

"I feel sick, mum," she murmurs pitifully, to Donna's concern, then slumps down in the jump seat. 

Donna shares a worried look across the console with The Doctor. She raises a commanding eyebrow and pokes at him mentally. She needn't have, as he is already in motion when she does so. He strides around the console so quickly that Donna is a bit impressed that he doesn't catch on any of the levers as he twirls past them.   
Donna sets the new course, then joins them.

"What's wrong, sweetheart?" she asks with a gentle voice and places a careful hand on her daughter's shoulder to steady the girl as The Doctor scans her.

"My head hurts and I feel weird." Jenny answers with a moan.

"Hmm," The Doctor sounds, frowning at his screwdriver, then up at their daughter. "Right, into the Medbay with you, my dear child." He says, at once standing and grabbing a hold of Jenny's arm to pull her up.  
Donna looks at him with dismay, but helps their daughter up and stands nearly completely behind her to steady the wavering girl. 

"Why? What's wrong?" she asks, gamely helping Jenny walk towards the Medbay.

The Doctor sends her a quelling look over top their daughters head, and gently leads the young redhead to a bed.

"We'll know that in a moment," he answers once Jenny is situated. The Doctor goes to one of the rarely opened cupboards and brings out some manual scanner or other, Donna thinks, only to be proven wrong when he brings one of Jenny's fingers to it and their daughter flinches.

The little machine spits out a strip of plast that he then brings to another cupboard, inside which is a large and complex, if sleek-looking, machine that he sticks the plast bit into. The machine whirrs and beeps for a while, then stops.

"Oh dear, this is unusual." The Doctor mutters, then manipulates the controls to get other readouts.   
Donna can't help but worry, the tightly locked chest of her anxiety over Terry practically vibrating in her mind in concert with this new fear. The Tinker really knows nothing of medical practice, nor or what the readouts are saying.

The Doctor turns back to Jenny, but pauses when he catches sight of Donna's expression. 

"No, no, don't worry, Love. She'll be fine, it's just a bout of temporal sickness." He explains, to Donna's intense surprise.

"What?" Donna looks down at their girl, who has managed to fall asleep on the bed. Sickness in connection with time-travel is practically unheard of with Time Lords, and since she hadn't felt even a twinge when she had first started traveling with The Doctor as a human, she had assumed that he had found some way to prevent it in all passengers. 

The Doctor smiles comfortingly at her and goes to fetch an injection which he promptly administers to the young redhead.

"Well, I assume it's to do with Jenny not having had a look through the untempered schism. Her mind lacks the information that the structures of her brain are built to work with. It's treatable, though we really need to have her exposed to the schism." He explains softly, though Donna sees the grim line his mouth has taken now that his attention is back on their daughter.

"The Untempered Schism isn't exactly available to us at the moment." She reminds him sharply, unconsciously reaching out and rearranging Jenny's hair on her pillow so she looks more comfortable. The hard line of The Doctor's mouth deepens for a moment, his eyes going dark in an unfamiliar emotion, before he turns and repeats the reassuring smile from before.

"We'll just have to find another access point."

They leave Jenny sleeping and sedated in the Medbay to meet up with Martha. The young doctor meets them directly outside the doors to the warehouse. She looks a bit frazzled, but surprisingly put together for what she's recently been through.

"Doctor, Donna," She greets them with a welcoming smile, and reaches out to shake Donna's hand. Donna bypasses the offered hand and hugs the young woman, then holds her out in front of her to have a better look.

"Martha, good to see you again, you're looking well." She says with only the slightest pause, because Martha does look well, if tired. 

"I'd say the same, except I've just seen you a few minutes ago, and it seems worrying to have you pop up again so soon." Martha says with just a bit of what Donna thinks might be exasperation as she turns and hugs The Doctor, much to his surprise.

Martha backs up and sticks her hands in her back pockets, while she takes a good look at them. "So, how long has it been for you, then?" she asks with some curiosity, then preempts them both, "No, actually, don't tell me. I don't have the energy for that, why don't you tell me what's going on instead." She says and gestures for them to preceed her back into the TARDIS'.

Donna and The Doctor share a look. Donna raises a questioning eyebrow. The Doctor shrugs. Donna frowns and gestures towards the hallway and the Medbay. The Doctor purses his lips thoughtfully, but just shrugs again, so Donna sighs and leads the way into the console room.

Martha follows, passing The Doctor in the doorway, before stopping short in front of the console and looking around, her eyes wide and her jaw slack.

"What happened?" she bursts out after a moment, only a bit of apprehension wafting off of her form.

Donna has grown so used to the way the TARDIS' have integrated that it actually takes a moment to realize what Martha means. She turns another raised eyebrow at The Doctor as he steps in and closes the door, but once again he just shrugs. She is dismayed to see him walk up to the console and start to fiddle with the fonts again. 

"Well," Donna starts to formulate some kind of story, but after a moment gives it up, her mind too full with everything to make something up. "I had to integrate my Tardis into Old Girl, The Doctor's Tardis here, to repair some rather severe damage, that's why it looks so different in here." She explains shortly, then walks over and hip-checks The Doctor away from the console. 

"I've told you to stop fiddling with the fonts, you daft martian." She huffs at his look of betrayal.

Martha stares at them, her mouth actually open in astonishment. "You have a tardis?" she asks, her voice going up several octaves by the end of the question.

"Yes, she most certainly does." The Doctor says with a cheeky grin and a wag of his eyebrow at Martha that Donna can't even begin to understand. 

"Though, of course you can't mention this to us the next time you meet us, because that will be past-us again, the timelines depend on it." He says seriously. "Not the TARDIS'," he says with a wave of his hand to encompass the changes, "Not Donna being a Time Lady," he continues, ignoring the fact that Martha actually looks like she might faint, "and most importantly, you can't mention the kids."

Martha sits down in the jump seat quite hard.

They try to explain the situation to Martha, but they don't really know enough for it to make much sense, especially to someone who doesn't have the intricacies of the gallifreyan language to fall back on. 

"Wait, you mean that this thing with ATMOS had already happened for you when I called you, but somehow the past-you knew to come here, even though I only got through to you? Isn't that a paradox?" Martha asks with some alarm. 

"In a way, yes," The Doctor answers in an oddly gentle tone that sounds to Donna as if he is talking to a frightened victim in some far off world. 

"It is a paradox, but since past-us don't know that we're here at all, we're relatively good on the time line front." He says as he ruffles his hair one-handedly and paces in front of the console. 

Donna watches him from her place by the engineering console. He seems agitated, but his voice remains gentle, so clearly there is a story there, but she isn't going to ask just yet. 

"I'm not entirely sure about how past-us knew to come," The Doctor starts.

Donna interrupts, as this is actually one of her areas of expertise and letting The Doctor explain things like this invariably lead to metaphors involving string, or the word 'wibbly'. The view screen obliges her and draws up a neat illustration for her.

"The time line split before Martha called us, but stuck closely enough to the original that a plicae formed, allowing past-Martha and now-Martha to merge again, along with the timeline." She explains, gesturing to the two intersecting lines. Two dots move along them, both labeled Martha, and eventually merge towards the end when the lines twine and merge.

Donna frowns at the image, thoughts swirling fast behind her eyes. "This is actually really unusual; Time lines don't usually intersect like this at all, the smallest change usually makes it impossible to match up again."

"Could someone be manipulating the time line, like The Master did?" Martha asks anxiously, apparently over her shock. She gets up and joins Donna by her console, though she is careful not to touch anything which Donna appreciates distantly, her thought caught up in what Martha's question.

"The Master?" she questions, recognizing the name of a prominent Time Lord, and the tense and unhappy set to The Doctor's shoulders.

>>>


	22. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so I'm still not sure I'm going to be able to actually continue this. My writing muse is kinda AWOL, and I started University this September, so my brain is also mush.

“Invasion?” Terry asks with every bit of the confusion that he is feeling expressed on his face. The thought is laughable, more than that is isn’t true as far as he can tell. He leans against the wall nearest the door and runs his hands through his hair in quick succession, trying to get a hold of his thoughts.

Doctor Malohkeh is clearly taken aback by his tone, as does Rory, though he seems just as confused.

“What d’you mean, invasion? As far as I can tell, the humans aren’t even aware that you’re down here.” Terry continues, gesturing vaguely towards the surface, then back to the scientist. “How can they invade you if they don’t know you’re here?” there’s a heavy helping of scorn in his voice now, and frustration. The situation is ridiculous, and the throbbing in the back of his mind isn’t helping his state of mind. 

Doctor Malohkeh throws a disgusted sneer at him through the bars. 

“You expect me to believe such an obvious lie?” she asks, then snorts derisively and turns back to her work.

“Oi, I can prove it, can’t I?” The young Time Lord snaps, his patience suddenly wearing thin, so he pulls out the Screwdriver, completely ignoring the startled looks he’s getting. It’s the work of half a minute to get the thing to project a simple 3D map of the are above them, using the data from his earlier scan. It isn’t live, and it isn’t strictly speaking a true representation of the situation, but Terry is too tired, too sore, and too generally fed up to care about a simple thing like deceiving a Silurian intent on world domination.

“See,” he exclaims, bringing the hand not holding the screwdriver up to massage the back of his neck, “a small sleepy village and a geothermal drilling station, no army, nothing that would indicate any kind of invasion.” 

The Silurian scientist looks at the projected map with an expression of pure astonishment on her reptilian face. 

“Geothermal drilling?” Doctor Malohkeh asks, and points one sharp finger at the large building on the scan, before whirling away and hurrying to bring up what seems to be scans from down below. 

“Can you bring up the coordinates for that drilling station?” she snaps at Terry, who glares but tweaks the map until various coordinates are clearly marked on the projection. 

“You alright there, Terry?” Rory asks from barely a step behind Terry, scaring half a year off his life, he’s sure. He hadn’t noticed the human stand up, let alone sneak up on him like that. He really hopes that Rory didn’t notice that he startled, though when he looks over his shoulder at the man, all he can see on Rory’s face is concern, his eyes flicking from Terry’s face to the hand that Terry suddenly realises is clutching at his own neck hard enough that he feels his fingers lock.

He’s prevented from snapping at the man as the door opens without warning, bringing in a pair of Silurian soldiers, lugging Amy and a strange man that Terry doesn’t recognise. 

“Dad!” Elliot exclaims from the other cell, which clears that up nicely, Terry thinks, feeling more that a little annoyed at the sudden appearance of one of his least favourite red heads. 

The man looks up in surprise, clearly shocked to see his son in the cells, but he is prevented from running to Elliot by the Silurian that has a hold of him.

“Doctor Malohkeh, we..” The first of the Silurians starts to say, but before he can get another word out he is interrupted by Doctor Malohkeh waving an absent hand towards the cells, still focusing firmly on the data.

“Yes, yes, put them in the cells and get out.” Malohkeh almost snarls, hands moving quickly across the keyboard of her terminal. There is a distinct air of ‘oh shit’ hanging over the doctor as she swirls about, even the Silurian warriors seem to notice. They exchange a glance, but the lead one shrugs and starts lugging Elliot’s dad towards the cells. 

Unfortunately, in Terry’s honest opinion, this Amy Pond seems to be about as impulsive as his version was cold.   
As soon as the guard seems distracted, she lunges for a weapon. The Silurian warrior is startled enough that the red head manages to disarm him, but she fumbles. The other Silurian throws Elliot’s father to Doctor Malohkeh,then turns quicker than than Amy can react, grabbing her by the throat. 

“You dare, monkey spawn?” the Silurian soldier hisses, literally hisses, in the frightened womans face.

The whole altercation is over so quickly that neither Terry nor anyone else has time to do anything but stand and stare.

Doctor Malohkeh gathers her wits first, seemingly not that bothered by suddenly having a person thrown to her, and indeed steadies Elliot’s father, before turning to take control of the situation.

“That is quite enough, Warrior.” She says firmly, then walks the human in her grip over to the cells and deposits him in with Terry and Rory. She seems quite annoyed when the warrior does not immediately follow her example.

The second silurian warrior has retrieved his weapon and is glaring hatefully at Amy, who is turning a disturbing shade of pale while scrabbling at the reptilian hand.

“Warrior, you have your orders!” Malohkeh snaps as she returns to her calculations.

The two warriors share a disgruntled look, then reluctantly follow their instructions and drag Amy to the cells. One opens the door to the cell that Terry and Rory are inhabiting, and stands menacingly by the door, weapon pointed in their general direction, while the other throws Amy into the cell. Rory manages to catch her, moving surprisingly quickly, and gently lowers the now gasping red head to the floor.

“That was unnecessary,” Terry snaps at the two when they slam the cell door shut. Rory is murmuring comforting nothings to Amy, who is wheezing and coughing, and giving Rory a bunch of rather annoyed looks in between.

***

“What’s the Master got to do with anything? Didn’t he get locked up with everyone else, or die, or something?” Donna asks, feeling like the later seems more right as soon as she says it. 

The Doctor tenses even more, a deep welling of unhappiness flowing from him that she just doesn’t understand. Clearly there is much more to this than she knows, and for a moment she really wishes she had managed to keep hold of his memories. Anything to know why he feels so miserable and twisted up over the mention of this other Time Lord. 

“Oh, yeah, he’s dead now, alright.” Martha says, and there is a grim and dark satisfaction there that startles Donna. 

The Doctor turns sharply away from Martha, a hand coming up to rub at his chin. Donna can nearly hear the grinding of his teeth from where she’s standing. She sees him take a deep breath, feels him brace himself mentally even as she sees the walls around him shoot up and block him off from her completely.

“Yeah, The Master is dead.” He says, and his voice is even. He stuffs his hands into his pockets and turns back to the two of them as if nothing has happened, as if nothing about the subject bothers him.

“Refused to regenerate, just to spite me, which I guess I should have seen coming.” He says, serious, but Donna can still sense the walls, the way this is an act he is putting on to avoid revealing his feelings on the matter. More dishonesty, and she doesn’t like it one bit.

“To spite you?” she can’t help but ask, because there must be a great deal of history there for this to have happened. Letting yourself die without regenerating, just to spite someone, seems impossible. Instinct alone would have driven anyone to at least try, she is sure of that. Even Jenny, who had no reason to even know she could, tried to regenerate all on her own.

His left hand moves without thought, up to ruffle his own hair in what Donna now recognises is probably a self-comforting gesture born of stress or trauma. She’s seen a great many Time Lords do similar things when BABY and his crew had finally dematerialised away from a dangerous situation. It is more than a bit disturbing to realise that she has been seeing it in her best friend for years and never realised what it is.

“Yea,” The Doctor mutters, hand still stroking his own hair, “We had some history, might even have called us arch Nemesis, under certain circumstances.” He seems to realise what his hand is doing and brings it down and back into his pockets with an awkward shrug. “Childhood friends turned vicious enemies, very Shakespearian, really.” He finishes off his comments with yet another shrug.

Donna doesn’t really know what to do with that knowledge, and by the grim look on Martha’s face, theres more to it than than.

“Arch Nemesis is damn right,” Martha actually snarls, “That rat used the Doctor’s TARDIS to create a paradox machine, took over the world, then killed millions of people.” She crosses her arms and glares somewhere over The Doctor’s shoulder, apparently not willing to blame the Doctor completely, but not willing to let it go either. “IF we hadn’t been able to break the paradox, I don’t rightly know what we would have done.” 

The Doctor nods, eyes downcast and shoulders slumped.

A flash of memory interrupts Donna before she can comment. It isn’t really there, and it is vague and uncomfortable with ripped time-lines, but she gets the distinct impression of a cramped house filled with people, and of despair. She shakes is off with a frown.

“Alright, not to diminish the ordeal or anything,” she starts, then turns back to her scanner, “But if The Master is dead, then it probably isn’t him that’s the problem.”

The scanners are still showing invalid results, which is frustrating to a wild degree. 

“I’m nearly certain that this is connected to the probable tear in space-time,” she says, because of course it is, and tries her best to avoid showing off exactly how tense she is. If the Doctor has decided to play at this being a normal excursion for the humans benefit, then Donna will play along. 

“A tear in Space Time?” Martha asks, apparently thrown from whatever memories had caught her before. “How can space time be torn?”

Donna turns and tries her best for a cunning smile, determined to follow The Doctor’s lead. “Well, that’s a good question, Martha. Unfortunately I don’t know the answer just yet, because the tear isn’t really there.” She twirls back to the console and lets her hands fly around the controls until all the data she has gathered swirls up on the various displays. 

“I mean, actually tearing Space Time isn’t impossible, and given the right tools, not even that difficult, but creating the same problems as a tear in space time, without actually creating a tear in space time… that’s some trick.” The numbers still aren’t adding up, the data keeps twisting and changing almost as if the variables are being changed without changing. 

“It would take much more power than the paradox machine that the Master built,” she can hear The Doctor explaining to Martha in the background, “It would probably take more energy than,” and suddenly he stops short in his explanation.

Donna turns to face him, her hearts swelling with hope. He is wearing that expression on his face, the one that says that something obvious has just occurred to him. 

“Oh, I’m an idiot,” he says, almost an afterthought. His emotive brown eyes drift to meet Donna’s, and he points excitedly to her, “and so are you, my dear wife!” he says it with such a smile that it takes a moment for her to realise that he just called her an idiot. She doesn’t have time to react to that, because the walls he built up at the mention of The Master are crumbling under the weight of his excitement. 

He hurries over and grabs her by the arms. “What did you tell me after you finished the repairs, Tinker?” He asks her loudly, then continues without giving her time to answer, “You said that Old Girl would have blown up if you and BABY hadn’t been here to tie her together. At any time, you said!” he exclaims excitedly, “The possibility alone, of a TARDIS exploding,” and then the pieces fall into place.


	23. Chapter 22

Hours later, Donna still hasn't managed to turn the information into a workable plan. Tinker had never encountered a similar situation; in fact safety features to prevent catastrophic failure had been standard on all TARDIS' since long before she was loomed. Should a TARDIS ever become so damaged that catastrophic failure was imminent, the TARDIS should have followed emergency procedure, ejected it's inhabitants on the nearest livable surface and removed itself to a different dimension. Even taking the missing components into account, Old Girl should have stranded The Doctor and gone off to die before he'd ever even met Donna. 

She might as well bang her head on the console for all the good it's doing her, and considers doing just that. Distraction from such drastic measures comes in the form of the Doctor stalking in, face scrunched up in thought. It isn't the kind of expression that means he's had a breakthrough, or even is on a promising mental excursion, rather it is reminiscent of dark times and tough decisions. It doesn't fill Donna with confidence, especially as he walks right past her to lean on the console without even a glance in her direction. 

"We need to find a Schism, Tinker," He says after a rather long pause where she's unsure if he is even aware of her presence. He still isn't looking at her, and the use of her Title is rather ominous. 

"I know that, Doctor. As soon as we get back Terry and Amelia, we can start looking for one." She replies, metering out the words and trying to keep her frustration in check. It isn't as if she's forgotten about the problem with Jenny, but it hadn't sounded that time sensitive.

"No, I'm afraid you don't understand." 

Donna takes a deep breath to keep her temper, trying her best to stifle the surge of irritation that erupts at those words. If there is one thing she has always hated above all others, it is when someone insists she doesn't understand, even if that happens to be true. It takes her a moment before she is capable of speaking without trying to rip his head off for that. They are in a difficult situation and they are both tense, she tries to remind herself. 

"Alright, what is it that I don't understand," she asks, voice forced down and even, then realises that she's placed her hands on her hips. She crosses her arms self-consciously under her bust, then huffs at herself and stomps over to stand in front of him, hands back on her hips. This stupid self-consciousness around her best mate is almost as annoying as his stupid face.

His face has taken on that terrible aspect that he wore in Pompeii, somewhere between anger and sadness.

"Donna, on Gallifrey, with a well-stocked infirmary, I would be able to keep Jenny stable and functional indefinitely." He still isn't looking at her, and his tone has morphed into the one he uses when he is at his most antagonistic, speaking to her as if she is being deliberately obtuse. It doesn't help her temper at all.

"Well then, Space-boy," she hisses, and is somewhat gratified to see his eyes snap up to face her, "We aren't on Gallifrey, and unless you've been keeping something from me, we can't exactly get back there, so how about you tell me what we need to do to stabilise our daughter, so we can get back to retrieving our son." It isn't a question or request, and it doesn't sound like one. 

The anger on his face flares brightly for a moment before it gutters under a torrent of sadness that is deep enough to drown in. He opens his mouth to answer, but snaps it shut again as Martha walks in, a yawn on her face and a cup of hot tea in hand. It is like watching a curtain shut, all real emotion gone from his face, replaced with a mild frown.

Donna doesn't follow his lead this time. Let him put on a show for the human; she isn't going to. Martha knows what is at stake, there isn't a reason to lie to her about how upsetting it is. Hell, the woman is a doctor. 

"Well, judging from the baseline on record and the readings we're getting, I'd say Jenny is experiencing some kind of strong flux of her brain chemistry," Martha says into her cup, almost yawning the words. "The infirmary computer keeps beeping on about running low on supplies," she pauses as she seems to read the tension in the room. "You can get more supplies, right? I mean, you have been travelling for centuries, you'd have run out otherwise," she continues with some alarm as she looks between the two Time Lords.

The sad look peeks out under the mask as Donna glares stiffly at The Doctor. 

He shakes his head no. "I'm afraid it isn't that simple. We'd need Gallifreyan-make pharmaceuticals, and they aren't exactly available in TESCOS." 

The Time Lady takes a calming breath before suggesting the obvious."Have you checked BABY's inventory? We were stocked for emergency situations, we might have whatever it is." 

The Doctor starts to shake his head before she's finished talking. "I'm not an idiot, Tinker," and he's still using her title, "I already checked. It isn't something I would expect a rescue TARDIS to keep in stock unless you focused on evacuating creches or the Loom stations. You aren't stocked for juvenile care, and while Jenny might be physically adult, her Time Lord mind is just a child. The only real treatment I can offer without access to a Gallifreyan juvenile ward, is acute Temporal Trauma via access to a schism, or to keep her unconscious, which isn't without risks even for us." 

His voice and bearing have morphed into something like a professional mask, like he is talking to someone other than the mother of his child, and it would be infuriating if Donna couldn't feel how pained he is under it. 

"She isn't reacting as well as I expected to the treatment, so I've had to up the dosages," he says, bringing his hand up to rub at his eyes, "I can keep the treatments up for maybe a week, if she starts to respond properly, but right now," he trails off and shakes his head. "I don't know if it is because the loom she came out of wasn't set up to deal with Gallifreyan DNA, but her responses are non-standard and I can't guarantee anything short of A.T.T. will work at all."

Donna takes a moment to absorb that, nodding along to herself as she twirls and faces the console. The figures and numbers she's been working with glare up at her from the screen. She feels paralysed, afraid that if she stops focusing on this one problem, finding Terry, she'll never be able to find the right solution, but now her daughter needs her to break off and help her. It feels like she is being asked to chose between her children, both in peril.

"Right, so we need," she mutters and starts opening new windows to work in, "we need a Temporal Schism, and we need an exploding TARDIS," her fingers fly across the controls, completely ignoring the disturbed exclamations from her companions as her mind starts connecting needs and possible solutions. A Temporal Schism wouldn't be able to stand in for an exploding TARDIS, but she might be able to harvest enough materials from one to mock up a dummy-TARDIS. Then all she would need to do is match up the readings from Old Girl, pre-repairs, to the dummy-TARDIS, then set the dummy-TARDIS to explode to create the rift they are looking for. Maybe. Possibly. Also, she realises with mild concern, lost as she is in her solutions, it might be a bit dangerous. 

"Wait, what?" Martha chimes in again, this time from right beside Donna, her voice turning a bit shrill. Donna glances at the companion, not really seeing her as her mind works through the options. 

"We need a Schism in space-time," she explains, then starts looking through all the coordinates in the navsystem, trying to determine where a Schism might form, "which might also give me an opportunity to find Terry and Amelia, though that really depends on where they are." She mutters, her fingers flying.

The Doctor moves up beside her, briefly looking over her shoulder before realizing what she is doing and joining in on the console beside her.

"And can we find a schism?" Martha questions after a moment of busy silence, not capitalising as any Time Lord would.

Donna keeps working, nodding her head absently, but The Doctor pauses as if struck. 

"No, Martha," he says calmly, turning to face the young doctor, "I'm afraid that WE can't. Donna, Jenny, and I, need to find a Schism, but it'd be much too dangerous to bring you along," he doesn't get any farther than that before he is interrupted.

"Do you honestly think that's going to work on me?" Martha asks in disbelief, her bright voice cutting through the haze of numbers and computations that have taken hold of Donna, who pauses to watch the two Doctors in confusion.

The Doctor does the thing he does when he doesn't want to insists, stuffing his hands deep in his trouser pockets and looking over Martha's shoulder rather than straight at her. Donna is somewhat dismayed by the wavering certainty she feels from him as he dawdles.

"Well, actually it isn't so much," he starts, but Martha heard the uncertainty as well as Donna did and pounces.

"No, we've had this discussion. You aren't leaving me behind just cause it's dangerous. That's my decision to make, not yours." The young woman snaps, her hands gesturing angrily to emphasise her point.

Donna can see the concern and frustration mounting in the Doctor, the mask of calm he had thrown on at Martha's arrival thinning alarmingly. 

"You're HUMAN," he says, almost a shout, tone angry enough that it gives Martha pause, "You're brave and smart, and extremely capable, but you're HUMAN." He exclaims again, then twirls and stalks a few steps away, hands combing through his hair, before turning back. 

"I try not to let my companions realise how Inhuman I am, and maybe I've let it go too far, but there is a difference between us. A difference that stubbornness and bravery aren't going to overcome, and certainly wont protect you from a Schism that we," and here he gestures between himself and Donna, "are capable of surviving, but you most certainly aren't." 

Martha does not look like she is accepting of this explanation, and Donna isn't at all surprised that Martha crosses her arms over her chest in defiance. 

"Bollocks." 

It s clearly going to be one of those arguments that take all day to resolve, so Donna returns to her calculations. She has no idea if what the Doctor is saying is true, but she likes to trust his judgement. She also knows that she wont argue against Martha about the right to make her own decisions about dangerous situations. 

"No, not bollocks! A biological reality!" 

"Really? Explain it to me then!" 

"Your brain might literally melt out of your ears!"

"Really? How many humans have you brought to a Schism to know that?"

"I'll bloody well show you the simulations!"

Donna almost sighs in relief when the two angry doctors retreat, probably to the medbay. She really doesn't need the headache.

It doesn't take her much more than fifteen minutes to narrow down a list of possible locations for wild temporal schism formations, and another few minutes to set the TARDIS up to travel safely into the periphery of one, close enough to collect some materials, but not close enough to set them careening into the time-stream out of control. She only hopes that it will be close enough to induce Acute Temporal Shock. She is about to call out to The Doctor to ask when he slinks into the control room, practically radiating frustration and worry.

"Martha's coming with." He murmurs, nostrils wide, and huffing like an angry bull.

 

>>>


	24. Chapter 23

The reptilian Doctor had left some time ago, looking worried and muttering under her breath. It seems like hours, though Terry will admit that his time sense is a bit off, that they are left to stew, though at least the children are entertaining, chattering on and on to each other with wild theories and complicated plans. Rory and Amy are less amused if he is to judge by the glare the redhead sends him at intervals. 

“Well?” she snaps during a lull in the chatter, though it takes Terry a moment to realise that it is aimed at him.

“Well what?” he asks, his tone coming out a bit more confused than he is really comfortable with given the company he is in. He doesn’t bother moving, having grown rather comfortable in his lean against the wall, and almost certain that moving will give him the tingles down all of one side of his body while circulation is restored.

“Don’t you have a plan or something?” the red head asks, taking a half step back and throwing her hands in the air in what Terry thinks is a bit of an over-dramatic fashion, especially given the limited space. 

“How about your screwdriver, then? You showed it to the lizard, so you clearly have one.” 

Terry doesn’t pout, though it is a close thing, and risks the tingles to reach into his pocket for the aforementioned screwdriver.

“I guess I was just waiting for your Doctor to show up and save the day. He seems the type that might get pissy if we save ourselves.” Terry mutters grumpily, a bit annoyed that he won't get to see what this version of his father might think up to save them.

“Never mind, then.” He says with a shrug, then rolls his shoulders again with a slight wince, before turning his attention to the door. His head is still bothering him enough that it takes him several minutes to get his own door unlatched, and an equal amount to get the second one open. He’s tired and pained, and the whole situation is stupid, and about all he wants his mum to come charging in the door to rescue him.

“There, are you happy now?” he grumps at Amy as everyone gathers up in the laboratory, and pointedly ignores her sneer. 

“Right, so how are we going to get out of here?” Elliot asks, striding out of his cell and straight over to poke at Doctor Malohkeh’s computer. It doesn’t take his father more than a moment to follow him, murmuring somewhat censoriously as he pulls Elliot towards the door.

Terry shrugs a bit, stuffing his hands back in his pockets along with his screwdriver before walking over to give Amelia a quick look over. Wouldn’t do to have her get hurt while under his protection, after all. The girl clearly sees what he’s doing and gives him a look that he thinks might actually be fond, but for the normally loud girl that she is, she is very quiet. Terry would almost say she is looking at him expectantly.

Amy and Rory are looking to him as well while Elliot's dad is busy fussing over the kid, Elliot himself is also looking at Terry.

‘Great,’ he thinks, ‘they really are looking for me to rescue them. Brilliant.” He mentally huffs, subconsciously trying to send the thought to his mum, and almost wincing when all that happens is that he rams the frayed edges of the mental wound. His hand slips out of his pocket and grabs onto Amelia’s jacket.

“So…” he mumbles, then before Amy’s face can contort into an even uglier frown, he nods at the door. “How about we go out the way we came in?” he suggests and walks out before anyone can think of something better. He pretends that he isn’t holding onto Amelia’s sleeve to keep her close. It’s fine, she’s a child that needs minding, he reminds himself.

The halls are eerily empty, though he can just barely hear something of a commotion in the distance as he leads them back down the corridor they had been captured in. Clearly the others hear it too, judging by the concerned look on their faces.

“Wait,” Amy says, stopping up, “shouldn’t we investigate what’s happening, or try to stop the invasion or something?” she asks, her voice louder in the corridor than Terry would have liked.

He tries not to roll his eyes.  
“Not sure if you noticed, Amy, but we have two children with us and a somewhat injured man. I’d say the first priority is to get them safe.” He says quietly, throwing a worried look down in the direction of the noise.

“We can go scan the area with the TARDIS, find out what's going on from there.” He mutters, herding the group back to the spot they had been captured, trying to make sure they don’t reveal themselves to any close by Silurians.

Amy and Rory both lag behind at first, Amy especially looking back with an almost mutinous expression of her face, though it seems Rory’s willingness to go along with the group pulls her along as well.

The sounds grow louder as they move back towards the place they were captured. It’s clear that something dramatic is going on, but Terry has other worries. There is the distinct possibility that the shoot they came out of has been filled, which will make their escape much harder, and while he would have been able to summon Old Girl or BABY, this version of Old Girl is out of his reach. 

Amelia tugs at his hand as the sounds seem to dim again, probably veering off in the many tunnels and caves that this subterranean civilisation has built as their new home. He meets her eyes, raising an eyebrow in question as he does.

“Do you think my parents are in this universe, Terry?” she asks, more curious than hopeful. 

Amy scoffs behind them, and pushes forward to crouch in front of Amelia with a hard look on her face. “Your parents are missing, then?” she asks, louder than is safe. 

Terry doesn’t comment even as he shifts his attention to the older redhead with a hard glare. 

Amy continues before Amelia can react. “I remember that well enough, my parents disappeared right before I met the Doctor for the first time. Years of therapy have taught me this; They’re dead, or they abandoned you, so you might as well get used to it.” She finishes and stands in an elegant movement that leaves Amelia clutching at Terry’s hand in what must be shock. 

Shock is one of the things Terry feels, surely, as he glares at the callous woman. He isn’t alone, clearly Rory is also upset, and is already hissing recriminations in Amy’s ear as she attempts to walk along as if she had done nothing wrong. This Amy is much more the woman Terry remembers, a cruel woman hidden under amity. 

He lifts Amelia up on his hip, swinging her up even though she is rather too large to be carried like this. He is a Time Lord, with an expanded sense of time and stronger than he looks, so he figures that he can be forgiven for treating her like a much younger child.  
Amelia clings to his neck, hiding her small face in his hair as he carries her back to the vertical access shoot that they’d entered through.

Ethan´s father looks somewhat sceptically at the smallish hole in the cavern wall, holding his son close into his side as he looks to Terry for clarification.

“You came from here, then?” he asks, tilting his head to indicate the hole, question clear in his tone about the feasibility of using it as an escape.

Terry sighs and adjusts Amelia, reaching into his pocket for the screwdriver and glancing around, trying to think of the best way of propelling their group up, while all he has is a sonic screwdriver. Coming down was easy, all they’d had to do was fall. Going up might be quite the problem.

“Right, does anyone have,” he pauses, catching the glint of metal peeking out of Amy´s shirt as she crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow at him in disdain.

“What?” she asks as the pause lengthens, Terry staring at her in dumb shock.

“Is that a TARDIS key around your neck?” he demands, gesturing at her with his free hand, more than a little fed up at this point.

Amy sneers at him as she fishes a key on a chain out of her shirt. “Yeah, what of it? You think the Doctor wouldn´t give me one?” she snaps, jangling the small metal item in what Terry is sure is meant to be a taunting manner.

Terry does not have time for this shit and grabs the key with a flourish, breaking the chain with the sonic screwdriver and starting the emergency beacon with a flick of his wrist, completely ignoring the indignant shout of the older red-head and Rory´s aborted movement to stop him.

“What of it?” he mutters, again readjusting Amelia’s weight that had been jostled a bit by his lunge, “I’ll tell you what, Amy Pond. This isn’t just a key,” he says as the familiar whorp-whorp of the Old Girl starts to echo through the cavern, “This is an emergency beacon, and all you need to do to summon Old Girl is to hold the key and wish really hard that she’ll come pick you up. If you’re human, that is, and don’t have a handy-dandy Sonic to start the process much faster.”

The Old Girl materializes around them with a small whine and a loving, pained, touch in Terry’s mind. She seems to have been waiting for ages for someone to use the keys, eager like a three-legged puppy at being called, and is in flight again before Terry has a chance to give her any instructions. 

With a muffled thump, they find themselves standing in the TARDIS control room, doors were thrown wide open and showing the old churchyard where they had started this whole mess. 

“Wicked!” Ethan calls, and drags his dad straight out the door, muffled shouting indicating that he is circling the TARDIS. “It’s bigger on the inside!” the boy calls eagerly.

A warning light flicks on and the doors slam shut on the eager child, leaving Terry and Amelia with the two natives of this universe, Rory hanging back and trying to look small as Amy paces, brandishing the broken chain at Terry.

“A beacon?! A bloody beacon. The Doctor never told us that! What if we’d needed it before?” 

She hisses and gestures, swinging the chain around like a small whip even as the Old Girl takes off once again. 

Terry rolls his eyes at her wild dramatic gestures, though he can actually see her point. Here he’d been assuming that Amy had known what it was, and had simply been holding back from using it for the sake of adventure. Apparently this particular version of his father was much more cavalier about the safety of his companions than Terry’d assumed.

“Why don’t you ask him?” he mutters as she paces, the TARDIS whirling around them. The warning colours were probably the Doctor calling Old Girl much like they had, though Terry did wonder what situation could possibly be prompting him to do so.

They landed with a thump, the door swinging open and The Doctor, as well as a woman that Terry had never seen before, hurling in through the door at speed, slamming the door after them.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry,” the Doctor shouts as he reaches the console and whips them into the vortex so fast that Terry is left clinging to the railing and trying his hardest not to drop Amelia, who is still clinging to him like a limpet. 

Amy, Rory, and the mystery woman aren’t as lucky. They tumble in what would almost look like some kind of dance routine until Rory actually loses his footing and falls on his face with an ominous crack that probably announces a broken wrist, landing straight on the grating and gaining at least one bleeding cut.  
Almost as if a consequence of this first loss of footing, the woman trips on a particularly wild yaw of the floor and stumbles, landing with one knee under her with a pained yell, while Amy end up clinging to a support column as if her life depends on it, feet flying out from under her as she clings on. 

Then, almost as suddenly as it started, the TARDIS comes to a halt.

Terry slowly lowers Amelia to the floor as he takes a look around. It takes him a moment to realize that the Doctor is leaning against the console, face in hands and miserable, the pain of their passengers drowning out whatever misery the broken Time Lord is leaking. 

There isn’t time for whatever drama the Doctor is wallowing in. Even if he doesn’t remember most of the medical training he’d had at the start of his life, he does know that they have both a bone-knitter and a skin stitchery in the infirmary. The healing of their passengers should be their first priority, then they can deal with whatever the Doctor has done now.

Rory has gotten to his feet and is now clutching his arm to his chest, but he is keeping calm, and Terry suddenly remembers that he is a nurse of some kind.

“Right,” he says, and gestures to Rory, “Let’s get these sorry fates to the infirmary and patched up, alright Rory?” Rory nods his assent, though Amy, having got her feet up under her, is the one who ends up helping. She supports their mystery friend and Rory both all the way to the infirmary with only a harsh glance at Terry and the Doctor.

Amelia is clinging to his leg. She probably needs something for shock, Terry thinks, and leads her towards the infirmary with only a look at the Doctor. Before the two reach the door, Terry hears the quiet, much too quiet for a human to hear, words that the Doctor is murmuring to himself.

“I’ve killed them all. They’re gone, I’ve killed them all.”


	25. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh Schism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you know that anxiety disorders can build up? I've recently been put on meds to treat my 20-odd year anxiety disorder. Don't expect too much, I've had this chapter written for a year.

The Temporal Schism that Donna has managed to locate is much larger than she had anticipated, if the sensor data is to be believed. Temporal Schisms are tricky things, and while the sensors describe a probable size that might fit a few earths inside it, it may simply be that they are picking up the complete energy output at once that the schism will ever produce. Tricky indeed.

Well, there is only one way to find out. The TARDIS’ are hovering several thousand miles away, so it should be safe to open the doors to have a peek. Donna shrugs off the uneasy thought that it is more a Doctor thing to do even as she throws open the doors with a flourish.

Well, maybe not that tricky, Tinker thinks, her eyes full of the enormous naturally occurring tear in time and space. It is a familiar sight, even as she has never seen anything like it before, even as her mind tries to expand again as it did when she was a child, even as her mind filters out the unnecessary data trying to cram it’s way in. It takes her a moment to bring herself under control again. It has been a long time since she’s been in such a situation.

“Right, well,” she mutters to herself, then turns around and heads towards her workshop. She has a harvester to send out and slim time to send it out in. It is Jenny’s big day, after all, and her darling girl will need all the support they can offer is she is going to come through this unscathed.

BABY has helpfully collected almost all the components for a harvester for her, spread out over her favorite workspace in the shop, and while it has been some time since she’s had to build something like this, she does in fact still have the nearly perfect memory of her youth. It only takes a few hours, and most of that is pure manual labor. No matter how smart she is, she still hasn’t figured out a way to speed certain processes up without a time dilation feed, and even that is more a shunting of spent time to the side, rather than truly speeding anything up.

By the time the harvester stands ready to deploy, Donna has grown a bit worried over her strangely missing companions. She had expected at least one interruption over her work, maybe some questions or suggestions from either doctor, but they had left her completely to her work. It seems rather out of character, as far as Donna is concerned, so she seeks them out. Only to check on them, after all, those two do rather have a habit of getting into trouble, and they have more important things to do other than rescuing them from whatever madness they’ve cooked up.

Madness is perhaps the right word, she thinks to herself as she freezes in the doorway to the medbay. Her two missing doctors are clustered together beneath what she thinks is the remains of a chameleon arch that has been thoroughly cannibalized, Martha strapped into their new contraption and the Doctor holding what might have been a comically large red button in any other circumstances.

“Right, ready?” the Doctor asks, even as Donna is working through her stupefaction. Martha nods with surprising enthusiasm, and before Donna can say a word to stop whatever the heck they are doing, The Doctor presses the button. 

A bizarrely mechanical whine issues from the bastardized contraption as Martha is engulfed in what can only be vortex energy drawn directly from the core of the TARDIS’, similar in many ways to the glow of a regeneration. 

Apparently it isn’t as painful as Donna remembers a chameleon arch to be, because the sounds pulled from the darker woman are anything but pained, joined by what seems more like maniacal laughter from her dear husband in a crescendo of sound that continues even after the light starts to recede.

Martha seems to have lost consciousness, though seems otherwise unchanged and unharmed. For a moment Donna can’t for the life of her see what that was suppose to accomplish, until suddenly her mind is slapped by the presence of what feels suspiciously like a newly loomed Gallifreyan mind, fluttering to wakefulness. 

“Oh for fucks sakes, you numpty moron. What have you done?” she doesn’t so much yell as breathe loudly, startling the unaware Doctor, who turns to her wide-eyed and guilty from reading whatever read-outs the contraption is showing.

“Um,” he starts, looking between Donna and Martha, then following a connection on the machine that Donna hadn’t even noticed until it reached the bed Jenny slept on, then back to Donna. 

“I…” he continues, as Donna stares blankly at the machine, her mind trying to dissect it to be anything that might not just have placed her daughter in danger without her knowledge.

“Well, you see,” The Doctor starts again, more confident now that several moments have passed without an explosion from either machine or Donna.

“Martha and I were discussing how we were going to get her through the whole Schism plan without her dying or becoming brain dead, which I would argue is pretty much the same thing, but now isn’t really the time for that discussion, well, anyway Martha asked if we couldn’t just turn her into a time lord with the chameleon arch, which of course we couldn’t.” The Doctor pauses with a demonstrative shrug of his shoulder, 

“A laughable idea. Until!” he practically jumps into the air at his own brilliance, “of course, I had an idea. I mean, I still can’t turn people into time lords willy nilly, but then I thought, I don’t really have to.” The Doctor is practically vibrating with excitement now. 

“I just have to turn her into a garden variety Gallifreyan, and then she has a much higher chance of surviving the Schism than if she were human, aaaand we have a perfectly useful framework I could copy in the form of Jenny, who was already unconscious so it wouldn’t hurt her at all, and et voila! Two young Gallifreyans!” He ends his spiel with a grandiose gesture, his tone of voice delighted and amazed at himself as could be.

Donna has no words. None at all.

The Doctor seems to realize that this is probably not a good thing and stuffs his hands back into his pockets, his bright smile slowly dimming and turning uncertain.

“Donna?” 

Donna blinks, her mind still processing this idiocy, though she decides to just bite the bullet and ask a few of the questions she has running through her mind.

“Have you lost your mind?” is the first thing out, followed by; “Was Jenny safe during your little experiment?” Donna hisses, gesturing angrily to her sleeping daughter, then back to Martha, still unconscious in her chair, “was that safe at all for either of them?” 

The Doctor seems to realize how worried she is, as he walks towards her, hand held out to her calmingly and an apologetic expression on his goofy face. 

“Oh, Donna, Jenny was never in any danger, I promise, and Martha knew the risks associated with the procedure.” He comforts her, or at least that’s what he intends, Donna knows. 

"Anyway, there's no need to worry," the doctor said, his tone once more bright and optimistic as it always is when he thinks he's found the answer to the universe and wants a pat of the back.

"Martha will be fine, once we finish with the schism, all we need to do is hard reset the Chameleon Arch, and she will be right back to being the lovable human doctor that she's always been." He gestures brightly to the spread out guts of the machine as he talks, one of the dials or possibly one of the switches probably rewired to function as a hard reset. 

Donna isn't impressed with the posturing, and she isn't all that calmed down, given that there is a very real Gallifreyan mind reaching out in blind instinct that will need to be tethered if Martha is to make it through the trauma of the Schism in tact, which in turn means that she will have to suffer the breaking of yet another bond once the woman is back to her human self. 

The Doctor should of course have been aware of that, but he is his usual thoughtless self, or perhaps he's just not that concerned about it. Maybe he thinks that he will carry that burden all alone, for All Donna knows, and isn't aware that even as they stand there, the juvenile mind is latching on to them both. It amazes her that he can't feel it the way she can, or if he can, he pretends that he can't, which makes no sense. 

"All right, space boy. As long as you know what you've done, fine. We're already at the Schism, and as far as my calculations tell me, we're at an appropriate distance to induce temporal trauma, so wake up the girls and help me lug them to the doors. Rassilion only knows whats going to happen, but I'll trust your judgement for once, I guess." she mutters and walks over to stand by her daughter. 

Jenny is still the most precious little girl in the universe, as far as Donna is concerned, even if she is about to take the last step into the life of an adult Time Lord. Hopefully the bonds between herself and her daughter, as well as her doofus of a husband, will be enough to ensure that Jenny makes it through the experience whole and sane. 

"Al right," the doctor says, then brings out what looks like a hypo and injects something into the junior doctor, following up with a few steps and injecting Jenny as well, "That should have them up and about by the time we reach the doors." he says.

He pauses momentarily as Donna feels his own reaction to Martha's mental grabbing, feels the nascent bond snap into place along side that of Jenny, but he shows no other outward signs that he might not have realized what would happen. Donna leaves it along and helps her slowly waking daughter to her feet. The walk to the doors is slow and tedious, as if the TARDIS’ are deliberately lengthening the corridors to allow the two young women to wake up and prove the Doctor right. 

The doors opened at their arrival in the control room.

Empty space was the first thing anyone would think when faced with the great expanse visible through the blue doors. It would have unnerved Donna, who had been frightened of empty spaces, both real and imagined.   
Tinker saw so much more than that. 

There was a certain clarity of thought that only came with this kind of emptiness. She stood with Jenny leaning heavily against her shoulder and revelled in the feeling of her mind floating on a wave of boundless possibility. She needed this, almost as much as Jenny did. Tinker needed this perspective, this illustration of possibilities of boundless space.   
Part of her mind bloomed out wards towards the great black that filled her field of vision, a tense pressure, like a muscle fully extending after having been still for too long. It was painful in a way, but the rush of euphoria more than made up for it, filling her with a sense of immortality. 

She carried the waking form of her daughter towards the very edge of the TARDIS doors, idly smiling as the TARDIS expanded the door enough that both adult Time Lords could stand side by side with their precious cargo without being cramped.   
Rightly enough, the girls were both standing on their own by the time they all stood comfortably in the door. Though Donna hardly had time or presence of mind to note it, her euphoria was not unnoticed. The Doctor kept glancing her way, a thoughtful frown pulling at the sides of his expressive mouth.

The Schism would erupt directly in front of the door, if Donna had managed to get the positioning right, far enough away that they would be unaffected by the shock wave that followed, but close enough that the radiation would trigger Temporal Shock in unprepared minds. It had been some time since she had been close to a Schism, but it had been a rather common occurrence when she had worked to rescue damaged TARDISes. It took barely a moment to shore up her mental defences.   
Perhaps foolishly she didn’t bother to ask The Doctor if he was familiar with the procedure, or even if he needed a refresher. It slipped her mind that he might not be trained to handle it, as he handled practically everything else with such aplomb. 

In an instant the black was filled as far as the eye could see, though filled with what would take a single person more than their own lifetime to describe. Even shored up, Tinkers defences shuddered against the backlash of the unrestrained of a Wild Schism. 

Even against such forces, she had not shielded the bonds in her mind, intent on keeping a close eye on Jenny’s reaction, and somewhat reluctantly Martha’s as well. She had never done this for anyone else, but remembered well the feeling of her own matriarch supporting her during her ceremony. If the unfeeling Bluegrove Matriarch could do it, then The Tinker would do the same for her children, who even then were starting to bloom beautifully. 

The Doctor was not handling it as well.


	26. Chapter 25

It seems strange to Terry that something always happens when he is leaving the kitchen. The strange walls of this Old Girl have their own way of signalling danger, weak and feeble compared to home, but still obvious to anyone who knew to look. Terry is less than pleased to realise that he has been on this strange mirror of home long enough for that to apply to himself.  
He hurries along, turning on a dime and sprinting through the door he has just left. Amelia had still been hungry, so he had left her in the hands of a bemused Rory when he had decided to check on The Doctor. Bad decision all around, he now thinks to himself, running into the smallish room. Clearly the universe doesn’t want him to interact to thoroughly with this version of his father.   
“Up, Amelia, time to go!” he yells, startling the red-head enough that she drops a whole spoon full of what-ever it is she is eating straight on the floor. She glares angrily at him, or she would if he wasn’t even now lifting her out of her seat with great haste and throwing her over his shoulder with a grunt.  
“Something is happening, Rory-boy!” he yells as he once more pivots, facing the young man, who has not yet had time to react.   
“Time to find the Doctor!”.  
It’s said somewhat sarcastically, though he doesn’t think Rory cottoned on to that bit, and he doesn’t wait around to see if the young man does as he is told, instead running out of the kitchen and straight towards to control room. There is every chance that the Doctor is getting them into some kind of danger, and Terry’d rather be in the control room than caught by surprise.   
“What the heck, Terry?” Amelia half-screams into his ear from her position slung over his shoulder. Her young voice is very loud in the strangely silent halls, the walls displaying only hint of danger in an otherwise seemingly normal Tardis. His footsteps, and Rory’s if he listens for them, are the only ambient sound, Amelia’s voice already faded out.  
“Sorry, kid, but the silent alarm is going off.” He explains, as he makes it into the control room, swerving to avoid a startled Amy, and setting the kid down where the old jump-teats were, before turning to face the Doctor.

Terry is disappointed to see the man standing casually at the panel, his strangely familiar shape bent to the side as the parody of his father watches him in concern.  
“The silent alarm…?” the Doctor asks, as if it isn’t obvious and screaming mentally at Terry. Surely the Doctor must hear it too, or even see visible alarm, Terry thinks, confused and suddenly unsure.

The Doctor looks at the walls, then the ceiling, his head moving jerkily in a way that Terry finds disquieting, before turning his eyes back to Terry.   
“I’m not hearing anything, are you sure?” he asks, not dismissive exactly, and very curious. 

“Can you even hear a SILENT alarm, then?” Amy, grown Amy, asks with as much sarcasm as she can cram into her words, arms crossed and a smug look on her face as she leans towards Rory, probably in a subconscious action, as he moves to stand beside her.

Terry almost growls at them in frustration as the Doctor takes Amy up on the discussion, launching in on some obscure explanation on how someone might hear a silent alarm. How can they possibly not hear the blaring, he wonders, then turns his eyes to his young charge. Amelia has her face scrunched up in concentration, head slightly tilted to one side like a dog hearing a dog-whistle for the first time and undecided on what it is. 

“You can hear it, can’t you?” he asks in surprise, shocked that the small girl can hear something the Doctor can’t. 

“I..I think I can. It’s that, uh, not buzzing, but almost, isn’t it?” she asks, her accent thickening as she concentrates. 

Now the Doctor reacts, as if trusting Amelia’s confirmation more than Terry’s initial report, which rubs Terry all kinds of wrong and sours his already heightened mood. The lanky fool that could have been Terry’s dad in different circumstances wanders over, sonic screwdriver out already and buzzing in Amelia’s face.  
“Oh, oh dear.” He mutters, or at least Terry thinks he meant to mutter. It comes out rather loud, and in a tone that has the feel of some much ruder words.  
He brings the sonic up close to his face, squinting, then smacks it a few times to see if that might change the results, before swerving to point it directly at Terry’s head.

Terry reacts on instinct, smacking the sonic away.   
“Oi, don’t bleep me!” the words, and the tone, are an exact echo of his mother. He considers being embarrassed about that for half a second, until he notices the stricken look on the Doctor’s face.

“Oh..” The Doctor says, voice weak and strange, face contorting in a way Terry can’t discern the meaning of.  
“You really are Donna’s son, aren’t you.”  
He snaps out of it before Terry can break the beginnings of an awkward silence, even the humans realising that a nerve has been hit and tensing up. The Doctor whips up the sonic again, as if the moment hadn’t happened, and runs a scan just out of arms reach this time.  
The sonic beeps, though the alarm is getting loud enough that Terry is having trouble hearing anything except it.   
“Right, well. That, that doesn’t make sense,” the Doctor rambles, now ignoring the other people in the room and fiddling wildly with the sonic, wild curses in all sorts of languages rolling from his tongue. 

Whatever it is that doesn’t make sense is rendered moot, however, as the Tardis starts wavering around them, not so much disappearing as displacing, a familiar and much loved version of the TARDIS overlaying the room in small flickers, milliseconds really. 

The Doctor looks around, bafflement clear on his overly expressive face, as the flickers lengthen. It takes a moment for Terry to spot anyone in the flickers, until a head of red hair catches his eyes, and then another, and suddenly he is straining to catch a glimpse of his mother, standing by the controls with Jenny at her side.

Suddenly and all at once, the flickers stop, and his familiar TARDIS snaps into place. All at once his mind is filled with the jubilant welcome of his home, and before he has a chance to do anything but gape, Jenny is hugging him tightly, her mind latching on to his own and embracing him with their sibling bond coalescing back into place as soon as their hands touch.   
It takes all that he has in him to keep to his feet, relief so strong it robs him of his breath flowing through him at the feeling, a feeling followed by wonder as his mother rushes forward and grabs them both in a crushing hug.

“Terrensé!” he hears, muffled against his hair and almost lost in tears. He hasn’t heard that version of his name before, or even heard it in Gallifreyan. He doesn’t bother to stop and wonder, instead flinging his mind wildly into his mother’s embrace even as he wraps one arm tightly around her waist and the other around his sister. He isn’t at all ashamed of the tears falling freely from his eyes.

“What the actual hell?!”   
Amy’s voice breaks the silent reunion up, shrill and shocked. 

*****

Donna regards the tall redhead with some resigned disdain. A single glance at Amelia, standing besides her still embracing children, reveal the identity of this woman rather neatly. That her dear fool of a husband, or rather that this version of her husband, would take up a red headed companion after their parting doesn’t sit well with her, though she is somewhat mollified to note the young man standing protectively at her side. An attractive redhead, but firmly out of his reach. How poetic, she thinks, before snapping out of her thoughts.

“What do you think is happening, a traffic stop?” she asks with a sarcastic roll of her eyes, then turns to look for the local Doctor.

Her eyes actually skip over him twice, her mind dismissing him, until she realises that Terry is standing with his sister, not gawking at her from besides the control panel. For a moment her mind actually stalls, confused and dismayed, before shaking off her shock and walking towards him.

“Oi, what the heck happened to you, you gawpy fool?” she questions loudly as she takes her place at the controls, leaning one hip against the panel facing the Doctor and crossing her arms expectantly.  
Even now she expects a snappy comeback, figuring that this new incarnation looks enough like their son that some of his attitude probably also matches Terry’s.

The overly expressive face in front of her, still quite flat with surprise as she joined him, crumbles completely. Before she has a chance to register what happened she has an arm full of sobbing Time Lord, completely incoherent except for her name, repeated over and over.  
“Donna! Donna, donna, donna, I’m so sorry, Donna!”  
He wails into her neck as he clings to her for dear life, his voice as broken as she has ever heard it, though it is doubly disturbing to realise that he sounds like their son.

She glances at her children, only to see them look away, both clearly embarrassed to be caught staring and unsure of how to handle the situation.Amelia, the young child version of her, looks equally uncomfortable standing besides them.  
A quick look to the other side has the grown Amelia, or at least she hopes that is who she is, glaring daggers at Donna, the young man beside her looking almost as uncomfortable as her children.

Donna scoffs at the situation, part of her just so done with the strange situations she always seems to find herself in, before another sob reaches her from the distraught Time Lord in her arms. Absently she rubs his back with gentle hands, unable to pretend that it doesn’t affect her.   
“There there, you great goof,” she mutters half-heartedly, “there’s no need for these histrionics. I’m fine, and Your Donna is probably fine as well.” She tries, which only seems to set him off even worse.   
“No, calm down, Theta, this is really,” she pauses her murmuring when the Time Lord in her arms freezes at the sound of his name. Suddenly he breaks from her hold, grabbing her by the shoulders and holding her at arms length to stare at her in disbelief. 

“You know my name, Donna.” He states with absolute shock, then blinks his eyes even wider, “You know GALLIFREYAN, Donna!” he says, ending in a yell, giving her a small shake as he talks. This isn’t exactly endearing this version of her husband to her, but she lets it go for the moment. It’s pretty clear that he’s had a bit of a shock.

“Of course I know Gallifreyan, you numpty idiot!” she responds, her tone equalling his, “I am Gallifreyan, of course I know the language!” He releases her as if she slapped him, falling back against the console with a string of confused mumbling falling from his lips, shaking his head as he goes. She manages to catch a few words as he gestures wildly as if trying to grasp the confusion out of his mind,  
“No, no, mmy Donna isn’t a Time Lady, that isn’t possible,this isn’t real”   
Before striding forward and grabbing him by the shoulders and bringing him back into a hug to try to calm him down. 

“Now you listen here, I was always a Time Lady, and you know what? We can go get your Donna fixed right up, but first we need to fix this whole mess, do you understand?” she tells him more than asks, her voice firm and calm, as if talking to a panicked child. It is really starting to hit her that this is what her husband would be driven to had Wilf not kept his promise. What happened in this world, she wonders, that kept her old friend from following through? Something must have happened to him.

“Do you think he needs a sedative?” a calm voice asks, and Donna almost rolls her eyes at the timing. 

“You know what, yes I do think so, thank you for asking.” She replies, amazingly keeping her tone level, as she looks up towards the entrance to BABY’s control room to see Martha taking in the situation with remarkable aplomb, that strange detachment Donna had noticed at the aftermath of the Schism still fully present.


End file.
